


Interdimensional

by Vampiricalthorns



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: 520 Day | Edward Elric/Roy Mustang Day, Angst, But y'all know what it's gonna be, Flashbacks, Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, This is the longest fucking thing I've posted here, its gonna be a hell of a ride, part two has not been written yet and god im overworked, they find a way back, this thing is just part one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-03-08 12:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiricalthorns/pseuds/Vampiricalthorns
Summary: They've been apart for so long, and now that they're together again, it's all wrong and life has to be rebuilt all over again.They're broken, and miss their dearestA story about being broken over and over again before the wounds can heal and a story about how to deal with unbearable distances.on a hiatus until author manages to find the energy to write this again. the fifth chapter is almost done but is proving a challenge since a sequel is also gonna be written





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okayyyyyyyyyy so
> 
> It's 520 day and I've been sick for the entire last week so not all of this is complete yet and will (hopefully) be posted every Monday and Friday until all five parts have been posted
> 
> There is a lot of plot holes I am discovering as I read through this shit and I have emotions
> 
> Tagging this thing is really hard so if y'all find an appropriate tag/archive warning etc etc please hand them to me and I will accept them

_**Munich, 11th of November 1923** _

“This place is odd,” Al says, his voice sounding surprisingly flat. His head _hurts_ from all the memories being crammed into his head, but by sheer force of will, he manages to stay conscious. In front of him is Ed, his _brother_ , holding a corpse whose chest is covered in dark, sticky blood. A girl is kneeling next to Ed. She’s crying.

Ed looks up, and he’s crying too. His smile is _broken_ ; grieving. “They don’t speak Amestrian here, Al. I’ll have to teach you German. We’re gonna stay here a while. Until we can get back.”

The girl looks up and Al’s breath catches in his throat. He knows this girl, and while she doesn’t have the worry lines etched into her face or dark pink bangs, it’s—

“Rosé?”

No reaction. Al’s not sure if he should have expected one.

“Her name’s Noah,” Ed says. He looks down at the blond man in his arms. “I guess you can figure out who this is.” He turns so Al’s able to take a look at the person’s face.

Al’s head spins and he tries to fall to his knees in a way that won’t have his kneecaps smashed by the concrete floor underneath him because he’s looking at _himself_. Admittedly, the other him is paler, taller, probably weighs more and has blonder hair. He bets, that if the other him’s eyes were open, they would be identical to Winry’s brilliant blue.

 _Winry_. His chest aches, because now he might never see her again.

“Me?” Al says faintly. He manages, somehow, to scoot closer to Ed, eyes filling with tears. “ _Me_?”

Ed exhales and from the look on his face, he’s considering how to explain everything. “We passed through the Gate. Like, _the_ Gate that lets us do alchemy in the first place by drawing the energy from this world. Everything here is mirrored to what you know in Amestris. There are people here you’ll recognise. Some of them have different names, some have different jobs. They’ve been affected by the environment they’re in, pretty much. This—”

Ed chokes on another sob and Al’s not sure how exactly to deal with Ed crying. He wants to reach out, to comfort his brother, to _hug_ him because now they both have physical bodies and he can do that and be a physical reassurance. But his corpse is laying in between them, head in Ed’s lap. Well, it’s not _his_ corpse, but it’s him, but it’s not but—

“This is Alfons Heiderich. He studied Rocketry with me at the University of Munich.”

The … _something_ Ed said after ‘studied’ is foreign. Al’s never heard the word before. It’s like a word taken directly from the language they speak here. Ed had mentioned something. German?

The girl, Noah, looks at Ed and says something. It’s strange, this foreign language, filled with harsher ‘r’ sounds than Al’s ever heard before. For some reason, the faint flame of curiosity is lit in his chest. Languages hadn’t really something he’d ever considered focusing on, with him being much too absorbed in the quest to regain his body.

Ed nods to Noah and stands, carefully laying Alfons down on the cold concrete floor. There’s something inherently wrong about dying in a cold room like this and to be laid on the floor like this. Being dead isn’t an excuse to be treated without respect.

“We need to call someone to come here— I know who.” Ed’s face darkens. “At least, he’s got a good heart, even though he made some decisions I do _not_ approve of.”

Al takes another look at the body that is supposedly _him_ , laying there with blood staining his white shirt. Gunshot wound, probably. What a terrible way to go. Then, his sight is attracted to the shipwreck, to the corpse in the armour. Al doesn’t remember her name. She actively tried to destroy his home. Her name isn’t really important then.

Ed’s moved over to one of the walls and is calling someone from the phone that’s located there. Nobody here speaks a language that Al understands. It has never really stopped him before when coming into contact with Ishvalan refugees in Liore or in the Central Slums. He gently taps not-Rosé’s hand and she looks at him, expression a textbook definition of devastation. Did she know not-him-but-him just like Ed? What if not-him and not-Rosé—?

 _No_.

“Noah?” He tries. The name feels thick and foreign in his mouth. Ed had pronounced it a certain way, but there’s no way that the way he had said it sounded _good_. He’d just have to improve then. Her expression turns vaguely thoughtful through the devastation and she points to her chest.

“Noah,” she clarifies.

Apparently, they’ve now regressed to the point of using toddler language. He points to his own chest, swallows— his spit’s thick and he could probably use a glass of water or two. Interdimensional travelling had a tendency to leave one _parched_. “Alphonse Elric.”

He can see the gears in her head turning as she likely attempts to wrap her head around what-the-everloving-fuck-is-going-on. “Alphonse?”

Her accent has sufficiently butchered his name. Al doesn’t really mind; it tells him that this language is different from Amestris. He’ll have to get used to this version, with a long ‘o’ sound and the ‘e’ being pronounced like _eh_.

He nods in reply to his name being said. The situation is awkward, so instead of staring at her, his now bloody hands or the literal _dead body_ in between them, he looks around for writing of any kind that might give him more clues as to what this ‘German’ is like. A sign on one of the machines near them tells him that at least most of the letters he knows from Amestrian is used here.

Did that mean that alphabets were interdimensional?

To his left, Ed hangs up with yet another one of those deep sighs that Al remembers barely hearing during their travels— Ed had often had at least one bruised rib at any given moment, if not several broken ones. Now, it sounds like he’s at least kept himself out of trouble that way. No broken ribs, just a broken heart and mind from losing another friend.

Al watches his brother walking back over to them. He looks far more comfortable with the automail than the prosthetics had had when Al had previously chucked part of his soul into this world.

He says something to Noah that Al doesn’t understand before turning to him, pant pockets hiding his bloody, torn up gloves. Ed gives him a smile that tells Al that Ed’s too far gone; that he’s been at this moment been shattered beyond repair. “We’ll have to wait here for a bit until the people I called gets here. One of them’s in Berlin, so he’ll take a couple days, but the other said twenty minutes.”

Al doesn’t have the faintest clue where or what Berlin is, but he nods anyway.

Noah looks at Ed and asks him something. Al catches the mangled version of his name again. Ed looks for a moment like he wants to die. Al’s seen that expression before— during their long hours of research in Central Library.

“What is it, Brother?” Al asks, voice gentle. Ed sighs— definitely a sign that there are no injured ribs —and adapts that familiar thinking expression. “I’m trying to figure out how the hell to explain this all to Noah. She knows there’s another world— where Amestris is. She knows you from the time you were in the armour. She can do some freaky-ass mind-reading thing.”

Al attempts to grin. One the inside he wants to lay down in his bed in the Rockbell house and just process everything. There’s a lot going on and _oh god if he never sees Winry and Granny and Rosé and Sheska and—?!_

“Oh!” He chirps because Ed looks upset enough for both of them, and that means it’s his responsibility to keep them upright and focused. “When I passed through the Gate, I got all my memories back. I remember all of our travels again, Brother!”

Ed sits down again, straightens out his automail leg and pulls out a note from his pocket. It looks like it’s been carried around for a while, considering the frayed edges and yellowing of the paper. A small smile crosses Ed’s face and he mutters something in German again. Rosé’s face lights up ever so slightly. Al opens his mouth but closes it again; now’s not the time to be asking questions.

There are so many questions he has, so many things he wants to ask. So much that is still left unanswered. Questions are resting in the ruins of the building, in the shipwreck. An array of questions begs to be asked about not-him.

He’s cold. The floor is slick with water and blood. Both him and Ed are bleeding, Noah’s shirt is stained through and they look like they’ve been through a frontline battle.

He doesn’t have his coat. Al wishes he had the red jacket, even if it’s a replica of his brother’s; a silent promise to find him. He found him. And even though he’s tired and cold and thirsty, he’s found his brother and it’s _okay_.

“I don’t know how old I’m supposed to be,” he says in an attempt to bring up a new conversation. The reek of blood is set in his nose. It’s _gross_. “My body’s 13, but judging by my memories, I’m 17.”

Al’s supposed to be a year younger than Ed. He’ll go by that. “How old are you, Brother?”

“Hard to tell,” Ed says gruffly. “It’s 1917 in Amestris, but 1923 here. If we count by the year I was born, I’m 18 in Amestrian time, 24 in German time. Your body is 13, your soul is 17, but here’d you be 23.” Ed looks like the math is hurting his head, but that can’t be right. It’s probably the jumping between two different times, two different seasons, two different _worlds_. “I go by Amestrian time to anchor myself to home. If anyone asks, you’re born in 1906. Go by Amestrian soul age.”

Al’s head is spinning worse. Maybe he has a concussion. He decides to not voice that thought. They’ve been through enough for tonight. Besides, he’s had his fair share of head injuries over the last two years he spent travelling.

Ed, having seen Al’s expression, laughs quietly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too at first. This world isn’t half bad though. Lots of good people, lots of bad people, lots of cool science.”

He’s oversimplified it. Typical Ed to place people in either the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category. Al wonders what, all in all, the defining factors are.

“If I’m going to be able to enjoy this place and the science,” Al points out. “It’d be nice to know the language.”

The door to the room bangs open and a dozen police officers enters the room. In the lead is a man that…

Al’s breath catches in his throat because Al— because Al knows this person. He knew Ed had said duplicates that he’d recognise some of the people here. Like Noah, but he hadn’t expected other people so quickly.

“Lieutenant General Hughes?” Al demands, looking at Ed. “It’s _him_? He’s alive here? Does that mean—”

He’s cut off by not-Hughes marching in their direction, wearing one of the least Hughes-like expressions Al’s ever seen on the man— or not man’s —face. He looks _livid_ , and when not-Hughes opens it’s mind to speak, it’s little more than a barely-restrained growl. “Edward—”

The rest is mindless chatter that Al doesn’t understand. The not-him— Alfons, is still resting in front of him, cold, pale and _dead_. He’s already observed this extensively earlier, but Al needs something to focus his attention on whenever Ed’s engaged in conversation he doesn’t understand.

Was all of this the toll he had paid to pass through the Gate unscathed? First kill Wrath and then have his duplicate die too?

He’s _exhausted_. Too much has happened in the last 24 hours. There’s a burning wish at the front, sides _and_ back of his mind that Ed had a place around here where they can catch a wink of sleep.

Once Ed has seemingly pledged his innocence to not-Hughes, he turns back to Al, who, in the meantime, has curled up inside his jacket with the fastenings unbuttoned to rest over his shoulders in a more blanket-like manner. Al’s watching his surroundings with unfocused eyes, fighting to keep them open.

He wants to block this all out, to close his eyes for a few hours and then— and then deal with all this later.

Ed shakes his shoulder and Al manages to gather enough energy to at least focus somewhat on Ed’s face.

“Hey, Al,” Ed says, and Al forces to listen to his older brother. God, he just wants to lay down, hug a pillow and maybe cry out the excess hormones because who knew that interdimensional travelling did something to you? “It’s time to leave. Hughes’ gonna drive us back to my apartment. You can sleep there, kay?”

“Mmm,” Al hums weakly. He lets Ed drag him onto his feet and lead him out of the room. Tomorrow, Al tells himself, _tomorrow_ he’ll take his time thinking about this.

 

* * *

 

 

He ends up spending the night sharing a bed with Ed. It’s nothing different than how it was when they were children. Apart from the fact that they’ve both grown, and half of Ed’s limbs are made of steel.

They had shared a bed every night after mom died and they had been all alone in their house. Is there a duplicate for mom here?

When Al wakes up it feels for a moment like he’s back in Resembool. Then, the smell of coal smoke and city hits him. It reminds him of Central, even though he hasn’t spent an extensive amount of time there since before Ed had gone missing the first time. He turns around and blearily shakes Ed awake. “Please tell me last night and now isn’t just one long bad dream.”

“Huh?”

Ed’s glancing at the clock resting on the table that occupies a large part of the room. It’s apparently too early because Ed groans and places a hand over his eyes. “Coffee?”

He watches Ed slowly crawl out of bed, watches him struggle to gain his balance for a second before fumbling around for clothes. Al studies the clothes— he’ll probably have to start wearing similar ones.

“You dress like General Mustang,” Al blurts out. Ed stops halfway in buttoning his shirt and a thoughtful expression covers his face. It’s like his brain is feeding him a bit of memory and sensory experience at a time to prevent system failure and overload.

“I guess I do, yeah,” Ed says. He looks down at the shirt, frowning when his automail fingers seem to get stuck in the fabric. “People are more conservative here. Besides, what happened to that bastard’s face? The eyepatch.”

Al grimaces and sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Remember Colonel Archer?”

Ed’s face darkens. “Of course, I remember that scumbag that literally released a fucking psychopath from prison. What ‘bout him?”

“He got turned into some sort of half-human, half-machine hybrid and— after General Mustang killed the Führer–”

“So he was successful?” Ed interrupts. “That’s good. Yeah. Good. Anyway, continue.”

Al’s tempted to raise an eyebrow at the strange behaviour, but restrains himself, because internally, he’s agreeing with Ed’s mantra of ‘too early’. “Yeah. After he killed the Führer, Colonel Archer found him and shot him right outside the Führer’s mansion. In the eye. He almost died.”

“And the others? Havoc, Breda— the rest of the team?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t talk much to them, to be entirely honest. I travelled a lot,” Al says honestly. He’s still wearing his clothes from last night, and it’s not like he’d packed in advance for the _oh well, seems like I might be travelling to another world tonight: better pack enough underwear!_ “Uh, Brother, do you have any clothes that would fit me? And maybe a pair of scissors so that I can cut my hair?”

Ed hums. “Check the dresser. I’ll ask Gracia to cut your hair later if you’d like. Coffee?”

Al looks up from where he’s been selecting clothing that looks like it’ll go together. He’s _smaller_ than Ed now, and with all his memories back, he feels a slight kind of thrill that he’s no longer looking _down_ at Ed.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Al says, pulling off the clothes he had worn to bed. It’s the same he’s been wearing since _all_ of this started. There’s blood caking the sleeves of his jacket and he realises with a start that it’s Wrath and his duplicate’s blood that’s making the air smell like iron.

Al feels vaguely nauseous. He probably has a mild concussion.

“I’ll be in the kitchen. You saw it yesterday.”

Ed disappears out of the room, leaving Al to change into clothing that’s still a bit too wide and long. He manages to find a hairbrush resting between stacks of notes, newspapers and textbooks. As Al brushes his hair back into a ponytail resembling Ed’s, he notices a paper filled with diagrams, equations and notes in German that he knows Ed only understands because it’s written in his characteristic chicken-scratch style.

He tiptoes out of the room— there are people that live in the apartment under them and Al’s not sure of what the customs in Germany say about making noise.

When he opens the door from Ed’s bedroom to the living room-kitchen combination, he hears Ed talking to Noah about something. A kettle is whistling on the stove. Ed grins at him, though there’s still that small droop Ed gets before he’s had coffee. “Hey, Al. Language training starts now.”

Al sits down by the table and smiles at Noah. She doesn’t smile back, but Al’s almost sure it’s got nothing to do with him and all to do with not-him.

“Okay then,” Al tells his brother. “What’s first?”

Ed hums before placing a mug of steaming hot coffee in front of him along with a piece of bread with cheese on a plate. “Greetings, so that you or Noah won’t have to go through me to talk.”

Al takes a bite of the provided food and chews it thoroughly. If he’d ever thought Amestrian cuisine to have its bland meals, this takes the cake.

To be honest, Al would almost, _almost_ be willing to hurt something (only in the name of good) for cake just about now. He’s more than made up for a small moment of comfort like that.

Ed turns to Noah and hands her a plate of breakfast as well. He asks her something and she nods. Ed crams half the food on his own plate into his mouth.

“Ed,” Al says, only the faintest hint of a threat lingering behind his words. “There is such a thing as taking your time with eating, you know. We’re not running after homunculi anymore.”

“Quit being a brat,” Ed says through the food before swallowing. “Now, listen to Noah, Al. She’s gonna tall you good morning. Just listen to how she says it and try to repeat it.”

The two words sound strange. There are only one of those exaggeratedly harsh ‘r’ sounds, but Al tries to listen and repeats it back to her. She nods approvingly, which means that Al either didn’t mess up as badly as he thought or she’s just being polite.

There’s a 50/50 chance of either possibility.

“Noah’s a good teacher,” Ed says. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, rather than sitting down with them, and he’s nursing his own up of coffee. “You and her will have a lot of time to kill together. I’m a fulltime student and spend a lot of time on campus, but she’ll stay here with you at least most of the time.”

Ed grins and places the mug on the counter behind him without looking. “Hang on. Before I leave, I’ll write you a list of words you can learn while I’m gone. I’ll jot down my schedule for you too. It’s—” Ed glances briefly at the calendar across the room. “—Thursday today.”

Ed disappears into his bedroom, presumably to grab pen and paper and Al stares down at his plate, looking at the half-eaten piece of bread. Maybe they can have another go at toddler communication.

Al taps his plate hard enough to make a sound. Noah looks up and she’s chewing, but that’s fine because humans are equipped with an amazing ability to swallow. “Plate,” he says, hoping that she’ll get that Al wants her to translate the word into German. He taps the plate again for emphasis. It takes her a second, but she does translate it. He grins, and she smiles tentatively.

Al continues to tap more objects, like his mug and the table, says the Amestrian word and waits for her to say the German word. By the time Ed’s back with a list and a hastily scribbled schedule, they’re up and moving around the kitchen living room, pointing at objects.

“You’re really something, Al,” Ed says from behind him. “You haven’t been here for even 24 hours, but yet you’re already up and about to learn.

Al turns to see his brother standing in the sort-of doorway between the living room and kitchen, moving a mug towards his mug to take a sip of … _hang_ on, was that _Al’s_ cup?

“Brother!” Al calls accusingly, stalking over to him and reclaiming his mug. “You can’t just steal my coffee!”

Ed laughs. “Sorry, Al. There’s a list of word and phrases next to your plate in both Amestrian and German. If you’d like, you and Ro— Noah can take a look at them together and go through the list. You can go out too if you’d like, but no further than Gracia’s shop, okay? I’ll pass by her when I leave to tell her what’s going on.”

Ed’s moving to grab his coat, pulls it on and grabs a pair of keys from next to the phone to slip them into his pocket. Al looks at him, suddenly desperate. “You’ll be back soon, Brother, won’t you?”

He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. _I don’t want to lose you again_.

Thankfully, Ed seems to understand, because he wraps Al into a tight hug that has Al almost losing the grip on his mug. “I’ll be back in a few hours, Al. Don’t worry. I’ll call if anything happens.”

And Al lets go, smiles sadly at him and jokes. “Maybe when we get back, your new wish will give General Mustang a heart attack or two.”

“Maybe. I’d like to see that,” Ed says, but there’s something odd in his eyes that twinkle sadly before Ed turns around and is out of the apartment before Al can process exactly what happened.

 

 

 

_**Munich, 15th of November 1923** _

They bury Alfons Heiderich one week later. It’s sad, and Ed spends the rest of the day holed up in his room, looking through a pile of photographs. Al gives him space and instead sits in the living room practising German.

“Very good,” Noah says, and a second later, Al smiles. “Thank you.”

His pronunciation is wobbly but improving. He doesn’t have much else to do, so the times where he doesn’t pour over translations of nouns and adjectives, he digs up a pen and empty scratch paper from Ed’s desk in an attempt to start figuring out how to get back to Amestris.

He’s sitting there a few weeks later, at the kitchen table, newly cut bangs falling into his eyes when Ed comes in through the front door. “Hey, Al.”

Al looks up and smiles. “ _Hallo_ , Brother. You’re chipper. Anything good happen?”

Ed shrugs. “Nah. Saw a few familiar faces, and all that.”

He peers over Al’s shoulder and hums. “Whatcha working on there?”

“Just thinking,” Al sighs. “I don’t wanna stay here forever. I wanna go home at some point— back to Amestris.”

“Not bad,” Ed mutters thoughtfully, looking down at Al’s scribbled notes about needing Amestrian blood to get through the portal (or was it homunculi and immortal-dads exclusive?) et cetera. It might be a complete miss in Al’s opinion, and he’s thinking of scrapping the theory for a while.

“I’m just missing so many variables,” Al says. “I don’t think alchemy exclusively can fix this. You said … rocketry? What’s that?”

“Well, you saw the airships those dickwads sent in. That’s a huge part of it— making things that can fly. Fuel. Fireworks.”

“Sounds like complex physics and chemistry,” Al says, adding a point about it to his list. “That might be helpful if we’re gonna figure this mess out.”

“Yeah,” Ed sighs. “I’ll dig up some of dad’s notes once. He had some theories about travelling through the Gate. They’re all in English, though.”

“Another language?” Al groans loudly, but he’s only a little exasperated. “This is … fascinating. Do you think it’d count for a linguistics degree?”

Ed laughs and pulls a sheet from Al’s stack closer towards him. “You might be onto something there, Al. Once you learn more German, I’ll sign you up for a French and an English course or something at the university. You’d do well with languages, I think. Besides, if I focus on the more science-y stuff, you can do languages, and bam, access to even more resources on at least the physical sciences.”

Al glances at the calendar. “Today’s Thursday.”

He stands up, pen in hand and carefully marks the Wednesday they’d arrived, scribbling ‘arrival day’ neatly above the date. “I’d like to keep track of how long we stay here.”

Ed looks past Al towards the closed door that leads to Alfons’ room. “We should probably start cleaning it out. It’ll be yours then. It’s gonna be odd sleeping in a dead man’s room, but you’ve done weirder things before, Al.”

“Yeah.”

Al doesn’t know fully how to reply to that statement. His brother is grieving the death of one of his best friends and his only close friend on this side of the Gate.

“Hey,” Al says to avoid Ed getting too deep into his own head. “I’d like to see the University. Every time you come back, you look happy. Is it nice?”

“Yeah,” Ed says and the smile is back again from where it’s been mostly in hiding the last couple of days. “How about we go, and I show you now? We need more food too and I think you could need a walk. You’ve been cooped up in here with nothing but vocabulary lists.”

“If you’ll ask, I’ll tell you in more detail what happened in Amestris while we walk,” Al offers. “You’ve missed out on a lot and I think I’ve barely mentioned any of it. Rosé’s child has gotten so _big_. He can talk and everything. It’s a pity you haven’t met him yet. She named him Kyle.”

Ed hums and he hands Al his spare coats. “Kyle, huh? I remember a little kid in Youswell named Kyle. He yelled at me when I explained that I couldn’t simply transmute gold to save the town from Yoki. He should be all grown up now. I never got to know his age, but I’d wager anything from fifteen to twenty.”

Al holds the door open for Ed. “I saved him when Lyra blew up the inn. I was scared I would end up impaling him on my armour and kill him that way instead of the pressure and weight of the rubble.”

He starts walking down the stairs. “What’s Noah doing, by the way? She left the apartment earlier.”

“She helps Gracia out in the flower shop from time to other. The people who get flowers from her don’t mind her— thinks she just happens to be born with tanner skin like us. That’s something they’re researching – this thing called melanin that determines the colour of your skin. Hi, Gracia!”

Al smiles in Gracia’s direction as she quietly claps the dirt off her hands before walking over to them. She points to Al’s hair. It had been cut by her only a week earlier. Losing the length had been odd but freeing. “Good?”

She knows that Al hasn’t been in Germany for long and knows that his German is still mediocre at best “Good,” Al agrees, voice soft and friendly. “ _Danke_.”

Her smile widens, and she turns to Ed and starts talking to him about something. Al spots Noah at the back of the store and raises a hand in greeting.  “Noah!”

She looks up and smiles before pushing one of her braids away from where it’s been resting over her shoulder. The thing that Ed had mentioned— about his time in the armour and Noah’s ability to somehow see that  —pops back into his brain again but he quickly files it away with a promise to himself where he would ask more about the skill and her culture once his German is better.

“How are you?” she asks him, and Al waves his already raised hand noncommittally. “Good. Tired.”

These two words are equivalent to his general mood of ‘I feel good because I’m reunited with my brother who was missing from my life for two years but I’m tired because I miss my actual home and I’m kinda coped up in an apartment all day with little to nothing to do apart from learning a foreign language and attempt to clean Ed’s room’.

He keeps up a short, if simple, conversation with Noah involving plenty of pseudo-sign language until Ed calls his name and they leave. The streets are bustling with people, but Ed has no issue pointing out waypoints Al should know if he decides to venture out on his own.

It’s a beautiful day, with some smattering of clouds lining the edge of the visible sky. There’s a distinct November chill in the air, however, and Al wishes back to Amestris where Rosé had knitted him a scarf and hat to wear when trudging up in the North.

“That’s St. Michael’s Church over there.” Ed points to a tall, flat, decorated building. “There’s this religion, Christianity, that’s a kinda big thing here. It seems decent, but I’m not about to subscribe to that sorta belief.”

Al laughs, though the concept of another religion intrigues him. The church is nicely decorated, with miniature statues standing in small niches up the wall. “It’s not like Letoism, is it?”

“Nah. They believe in this one so-called capital-g God who created the Earth and everything on it. 2000 years ago he finds this virgin— they call her Maria here, but I’ve heard that the name depends on the country, who gets pregnant by sheer force of will or something. She births a son, he’s more or less magical: goes about walking on lakes, conjuring food and all that. He’s martyred before coming back to life and flying up to heaven to stay with his ‘dad’, this capital-g God. They have a holy book, the Bible, and I believe this lot also has a holy dude in this country further south— Italy —that holds some power.”

“That sounds interesting.” Al stops and looks at the church. “It’s an old building. I can imagine it’s quite a big religion then.”

“Yuuup.” Ed draws the sound out. “And it’s not something that should be discussed in the open, even in another language. Quite a lot of people here have strong opinions about certain groups. Remind me when we’re back and I’ll fill you in.”

The total walk to the university is just under thirty minutes and Al has a brief thought that three days a week Ed has to be up and walking here at the crack of dawn. The mere thought of it makes him shudder and Al wonders how his grumpy brother seems to his professor that early.

Then they walk onto the university campus and _oh_ —

“It’s beautiful,” Al breathes, eyes wide. He turns around and around in a circle to take in everything. In retrospect, he’s pretty sure he must have looked like an actual idiot standing on a path in the middle of a garden spinning like that. But it doesn’t matter. “This is where you study?”

“More or less. Some of the practical lessons are out of the city. That’s experiments mainly. The dangerous ones. Sometimes we work with circuses and carnivals. That’s more the fireworks part though.”

“Yo! Edward!”

Al looks up and there’s a girl coming towards them, bag slung over one shoulder and carrying a book under the other.

“Hey! You were gone for a while until the last couple of days,” the girl says.

“Hey Clause,” Ed says, putting his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Shit hit the fan. Alfons is dead.”

The bag drops from Clause’s shoulder and Al’s heart clenches— the way Ed had said it —hadn’t been gentle. “Ed,” he hisses, glaring at his brother. “You are allowed to be the tiniest bit nicer about it.”

It comes out as a broken mix of German and Amestrian, and Ed looks at him with half a grin that had previously been reserved only for Winry and Elicia. “Nah, she prefers it like this.”

Clause’s eyes are shiny, but she’s not crying like Al had expected her to. She manages a smile, but it’s fake. “Was he sick or—?”

“Yeah.” Ed lets out a sigh. “I don’t know what, but he apparently collapsed while working on this one research project he had. He died before I managed to get there since it was the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry,” Clause says, and she does look sorry for Ed. The grief is written into the lines on her face. Then, she turns to Al and seems to notice him for the first time. The lines disappear and her face cracks into a wide grin. “Now who’s _this_?”

Al points to Ed, indicating for him to explain is mysterious identity. Ed flashes him a smile that’s all teeth. Al kind of hates him the slightest bit for that. “Go on, Al,” he mutters under his breath in Amestrian.

“I’m Al,” Al explains then. He feels like an idiot. “Al Elric. I’m Ed’s brother.”

Ed sends him a thumbs up before going off explaining that neither of them are German natives, but that Ed was offered to come study in Munich and that Al had come here just a few weeks ago too to study languages and chemistry. (Not that Al had understood most of the actual conversation; Ed had told him later over dinner.)

Al’s pretty sure that Clause already knew that much, but a cover story has never hurt anyone.

She leaves them soon after to wander the campus and Al turns to face Ed. “You seem to at least get along with someone here apart from just Noah.”

Ed shrugs. “Eh. Partially. I talk to people, like, I’m not a recluse or anything. Talking to her is kinda essential anyways— she’s my lab partner most of the time. Ah, anyway, because we’re here again, I might as well pick up some extra coursework from my physics professor.”

 

 

 

_**Munich, 13th of March 1924** _

One morning in March— März —Al wakes up to Ed’s voice calling out in an interesting mix of Amestrian, German, what sounds like it could be English and … was that _Xingese_? _Where the_ —?”

Al gets up, wraps the thickest of his blankets around him and pads out of his bedroom, only to take a hurried step back. “Brother … what is—?”

“Not one word,” Ed warns. “Not one single fucking word, Al.”

The floor is covered in water and diluted coffee. On the stove, the kettle looks like it’s been through a beating.

Ed stops, closes his eyes for a moment before sighing heavily. He’s been doing that a lot lately some part of Al’s brain registers faintly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just on edge.”

Al wants to ask what’s made Ed yell and probably drop the innocent kettle to the hardwood floor of their apartment kitchen at 8 am on a Thursday morning. Then, he yawns with the realisation that he would very much like to go back to bed as soon as possible. “Did you just speak Xingese?”

Ed freezes from where he’s grabbing a dishtowel out of a drawer. “Maybe? How’d you know what that sounds like, anyway?”

Al lets out another yawn-with-the-potential-to-swallow-Liore. “I was travelling around the entire country for a while and met a lot of people from all over Amestris, Xing and Creta. I’m not sure that the Cretan refugees were allowed to stay in Amestris but I did leave them alone.”

He carefully steps around the deepest parts of the coffee lake and takes the dishtowel Ed offers him. “Where’d you learn it? Xingese, I mean.”

Ed doesn’t answer and only stares at the coffee puddle like it’s a research project.

“Brother?” Al prompts gently. He’s not awake enough for this — talking is a chore and the only appealing things to him right now is either the comfort of his bed or abhorrent amounts of coffee that would put any military office to shame.

Coffee in bed…

Ed rubs at his eyes with his unoccupied hand. His eyes are rimmed red, tear tracks can be spotted on his face and Al’s mind reels as it tries to keep up with reality, no matter how slow-going it is. Has Ed been crying?

Ed doesn’t often cry, only cries when seeing either Al or Winry in disturbing amounts of pain that he thinks he’s caused. There are so few things that can cause it, but even the narrow pool of possibility is confusing Al. Had it been a nightmare? An injury severe enough for him to cry?

“Mustang,” Ed mutters unwillingly a few moments later. “He’s fluent. Used it to speak in code when we were in Central Command. Nobody really pays attention to that. Amestris’ just a country of immigrants and annexed cultures anyway. So yeah, he taught me it.”

There’s something off in Ed’s voice. It’s terrible; a shadow of guilt tinged with blood-red spots of distaste and something else AL can’t place his finger on. It’s the same expression that flickers across Ed’s face whenever Al mentions the military or…

“Brother,” Al says slowly. He gets up from the floor and wrings the dishcloth over the sink. Small droplets of coffee hit the metal with quiet _plings_. He knows what is going on. He coughs, clears his throat and wonders how to formulate his words. “What do you think of General Mustang?”

He can sense Ed’s ‘cornered animal expression’ before he turns around to see it. Al doesn’t’ really expect an answer and instead puts on his best sleepy smile (which isn’t too hard), pats his brother on the back before stepping around the coffee pile, back towards his _warm, comfy_ bed. “Never mind. I think I will go back to bed. Good luck with your classes, Brother.”

When he lays down, Al’s mind is awake, spinning; going through all the information at speeds that to anyone else would likely be terrifying. All the clearer memories he has where he’s seen Edward and the general together. And then he realises, there hasn’t been much at all. A couple of smiles, a few looks — but it’s not much at _all_.

Has he been missing something?

 

 

 

_**Central Command, 1915** _

“Do you speak any languages besides Amestrian, Edward?”

Ed looks up at Mustang from where he’s sitting behind his desk looking all high and mighty. “No. What’s it to you, anyway?”

“Curiosity, partially,” Mustang puts down the file he’s been looking at and stares straight at him. “I have an assignment here that’s due to start in a few months or so. There are Xingese immigrants potentially looking to start trouble in the North-Eastern region of Amestris. It says in the file that having knowledge of the Xingese language is recommended. It also calls for a qualified and talented alchemist. I’d have you have the assignment since I don’t have the time for the assignment myself at the present time.”

Mustang gestures vaguely in the direction of the piles and piles of files growing steadily taller on the top right corner of his desk.

Ed stares at him, incredulous. “You speak Xingese?”

Mustang raises a too-perfect black eyebrow at Edward. “Yes. My ancestry is Xingese and my foster mother thought it valuable to know the language. She signed me up for classes when I was young.”

He has a brief vision of itty-bitty Mustang staring down at the foreign language, learning to read the small pictures that were so different from Amestrian. The bare idea of a kid-sized Mustang is … hard to imagine.

Ed scoffs. “I can learn it. It can’t be so hard.”

“You underestimate the language, Fullmetal.” Mustang’s voice is flat but his expression reveals the amusement. “I can teach you some, but most of it you will have to do on your own. I would recommend improving your handwriting — as you undoubtedly know, Xingese uses a different alphabet and one mistake could end up with a character having an entirely different meaning.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've changed the format of how the different segments are organised, so instead of saying a title, there is now the place and time. I hope that it'll be easier to imagine how the different pieces of this mess interact.
> 
> Enjoy
> 
> Please tell me if you find any spelling mistakes, it's not beta-read and I'm not an English native <3

_**Munich,** **11th of June 1924** _

“Does German have a better name for the duplicates?”

Al looks up from his papers, from where he’s studying the various kinds of flowers native to the area around Munich. It’s not vital to know, but he wants to immerse himself in this place, in this culture.

Ed hums noncommittally. “ _Doppelgänger_ , perhaps.”

Al hurries to write that down in his notebook. He closes it and replies in German, “How many of them have we met now?”

Ed slams his textbook closed and drops it to the floor beside the couch with a distasteful expression. Exams were coming up and Al had been extensively told exactly how little his brother approved of them. “Eh, my doppelgänger’s dead. He died in London. Or, huh, I died for him. That’s where my soul ended up the first time I got chucked through the Gate. Your doppelgänger —” Ed’s face turned solemn for a moment. “—Gracia, Hughes, Rosé, Clause—”

“Clause?” Al stares at Ed before letting out a startled sound of recognition. “That girl we saved from Majhal. Before you got certified. That’s her?”

Ed nods before continuing on. “Bradley. I’ve seen Havoc around once or twice. He works somewhere in the north of Munich.”

“More?” Al asks. He doesn’t need to look at Ed to see that expression. He knows it too well at this point; sees Ed wear it several times a week after classes. Al knows what it means but doesn’t pressure Ed into talking. “I think I might have seen … Fuery around? Of course, not all of them are in Germany. This world is so big. They might live in America for all we know.”

A knock on the door has Ed standing up to answer it. Al hears Gracia’s voice, so Al assumes that she’s only checking up on them. He wonders how the actual Gracia is holding up after first losing her husband and then him and Ed. She’d told him one night when he’d stayed in Central from while that the two of them were like sons to her and that they’d always be beds and a warm meal waiting with her, should they need it.

Al looks up to see Noah sitting down in one of the two cosy armchairs that have been crammed into their tiny living room. She looks tired — not sleepy, but rather like the world has beaten her down one time too many and placed concrete block upon concrete block atop her shoulders.

Ed’s calling from the front hall, in worried Amestrian. “Can you check her for injuries, Al? She was assaulted by someone in the flower shop! Accused her of stealing work from ‘proper Germans’!”

Al’s on his feet in seconds. As he gets closer to her, he notices the faint bloomings of a bruise on her cheekbone. Her eyes are rimmed red from crying and small darkenings on her blouse reveal her tears.

“Are you hurt? What happened?” He asks, voice gentle as he gently pushes a strand of her hair away from her face. “Does anywhere else hurt apart from your cheek?”

She nods and presses a hand to just below her collar bone. “He didn’t manage to hit me too hard. Officer Hughes managed to take action while walking past.”

There are worried whispers now coming from the kitchen and the sound of the front door slamming shut. By Al’s guess, Ed’s invited Gracia inside and instructed her to cool and wet one of the clean dishtowels Al had folded earlier in the day. Ed’s steps get fainter as he goes looking for their (admittedly rather extensive, now that they don’t have their alchemy) first-aid kit.

Al’s still unsure of how much force had been behind the punches and while it doesn’t _look_ broken, it’s hard to be sure. He raises a hand and gingerly presses two fingers towards her jaw before tracing them upwards to the bruise under her eye. Noah hisses but doesn’t flinch away from him.

He presses his other hand to her forehead and moves it doesn’t to the bridge of her nose, checking to see if it’s broken. Considering that it’s not bleeding, crooked or bruised, Al’s pretty sure that it’s fine.

“I’m sorry,” Al says because he _is_. He _is_ sorry that she faces criticism and violent attacks because of how she looks. “What he did to you was _not_ okay. What he said was entirely untrue and you shouldn’t listen to it nor take it to heart. You have just as much of a right to be here as everyone else. You speak German and abide by German law. That’s better than some ‘native’—” He air quotes the word with just the faintest tinge of distaste, “—You have a right to work in Germany. You have just as much of a right to stay here as Gracia, me and Brother.”

She’s crying again, but Al’s not entirely sure whether it’s from the fact that she’s hurt or if it’s a purely emotional response to his rant. Gracia comes up behind him, her low heels clicking softly against the hardwood flooring. She hands Noah a wet, cold cloth, which Noah presses against her cheek with no comment.

Gracia looks down at him, tight lines etched into the corners of her eyes. “Officer Hughes managed to rapidly take control of the situation, thank God. I was in the back room, watering some of the smaller plants we don’t keep out in the open.”

Al grits his teeth. “Please tell me that assault of that kind is a punishable crime here, Gracia. It was entirely uncalled for.”

“Yes. It is, don’t worry. Officer Hughes mentioned that he would take the pan to the police station and then come back for statements and witness reports. I’m not sure how much they can do considering the discrimination within the legal system, but I’m sure he’ll do his best.” Gracia sighs softly. “He’s a fine man, that Officer Hughes. A good person, although with his flaws.”

“You would be good for each other,” Al says. He’s thinking of the Amestrian version of the two, back to how happy they had been before Hughes had been killed, back to how much joy _he’d_ gotten from seeing them dole over little Elicia like she was the centre of their universe— which, admittedly, she was. Still was.

Gracia blinks at him, the faintest of a blush dusting her cheeks as she takes the now warm cloth back from Noah to dip it in the cold water bowl she’d brought from the kitchen. “How would you know, Alphonse?”

“I spent a lot of my time where I came from watching people,” Al admits, and it’s not even a lie. A fraction of a second later, he hears a triumphant yell from their bathroom followed by uneven footsteps before Ed appears in the living room holding a box. He stops when he sees Gracia. “What did you say to her, Al? She looks like the moon’s just fallen down.”

Al smiles sheepishly. “Something about her and Officer Hughes being good for each other.”

Instantly, Ed adopts the same forlorn look Al’s pretty sure he had been wearing just a couple seconds prior. Al knows what he’s thinking about — celebrating his birthday with them, Gracia having Elicia, learning that Ed could do transmutations without the need of a physical array (something that Al guessed he would be able to do too now that he had all his memories back and remembered the Gate.)

“Yeah,” Ed says softly. “You would.”

Gracia’s looking between them, trying to work out why they’re wearing sad smiles seemingly without any reason behind them.

Ed walks over to them and crouches next to Al in front of Noah. His automail is creaking and Al has the horrible realisation that there’s not a single person in Germany — or the rest of this world for that matter — that even knows what automail is. They keep it hidden from every but Noah, since she _knows_. Al files the observation away for later thought and consideration.

Ed’s looking over Noah’s collar bone, gently prodding at it to see if it’s bruised badly or fractured. It doesn’t seem to be and Ed leans back on his heels. “That probably hurts like a bitch, huh?” Noah nods and Ed slips into Amestrian. “Fuck, I wish we were in Amestris so that I could sneak into Mustang’s drawer and steal some painkillers from there. Those usually did the trick for pain like that with a sip or two of the crappy whiskey he stored there.”

Al just stares at him, for a moment unsure of what language Ed had speaking. Maybe the moon _has_ fallen down after all. Then, his brain catches up, realises what Ed had said and _oh_.

“Brother,” Al hisses, in German, for the sole reason that it sounds so much more aggressive than Amestrian does and _oh_ , letting go of the accumulated rage of Noah’s assault and this confession from Ed feels good. “You can’t just steal Mustang’s booze and painkillers. First of all, that’s incredibly rude, second, you were _too_ young to drink at that time and third, you should know better than to mix alcohol and whichever painkiller he stored there. You’re a _scientist_ , Edward, not an _idiot_.”

Gracia blink, taken aback from Al’s outburst. “Professor Mustang? Ed’s chemistry professor Mustang?”

Al turns to stare at her, then at Ed, and then back at Gracia. “Pardon?”

At least Ed has the decency to look like a deer caught in the headlights.

 

 

 

**_Central Command, 1915_ **

Ed’s head is killing him.

He’s been awake all night trying to figure out a circle that just refuses to make sense to him.

He’d gone straight to the library after he’d gotten the assignment files from Mustang and found the Foreign Alchemy section. Ed’s heard (and read) somewhere before that Cretan alchemy looked all swirly and dealt more in weather manipulation (to handle their differing climate). Aerugonian alchemy was heavily water-based since they were a coastal country, and besides, had a considerable farming industry while Xing — well, Ed didn’t know much about it, apart from the fact that some of it concerned healing. Drachma didn’t use alchemy and the practice was allegedly outlawed in certain Drachman provinces.

Five hours spent breathing in dry library air and book dust hadn’t helped his head in the slightest. In fact, it might’ve just made it worse.

And now, standing alone in Mustang’s office during lunch hours is anything but appealing. What he wants is for the migraine pounding behind his eyes to go away and for the rest of this mess to sort itself out in the process.

_Homunculus, please drop dead now and stop pestering me. If the Gate is playing nice too, give my brother his body back too. Thank you, that was all._

Ed knows that Roy drinks too much, that he comes in looking half-dead from a killer hangovers at least once or twice a week. He also knows that the bastard keeps painkillers in his desk drawer. If he’s lucky, there’s a crappy bottle of _something_ there too to help him swallow them. Alcohol’s vile, but military coffee is worse. The sink water here could probably kill an elephant after a sip or two.

For being a wealthy military, Ed’s sure that they at least could get their hands on _drinkable coffee._

Like doing more trade with Aerugo. It’s not war times, and Aerugo’s got nothing against them.

…At least not more than every other country bordering them.

The bottle of painkillers is in the bottom drawer (the one that requires a key to open, of _course_ ). Ed’s not sure who the bastard thinks he’ll be stopping because it certainly isn’t Ed. With a clap and a flash of icy blue that makes his eyes burn, the drawer opens to reveal a white bottle of medicine and what looks to be dirt-cheap whiskey.

Gross.

Ed’s willing to bet a thousand cenz that Mustang spikes his coffee with it.

The whiskey burns like fire down his throat but at least he manages to swallow two of the small white pills that he’s only about 95% sure are actually what the label says.

He takes special care to alchemically seal the drawer back shut before stalking over to one of the couches and collapsing onto it with a heavy _thump_ that has both his back and his head crying out in agony.

It’s too warm, so Ed pulls off his jacket and pulls it over himself in a pathetic attempt at a blanket. The whiskey isn’t doing him any favour in regards to the growing nausea, but if he manages to will his brain into silence, maybe he’ll get an hour or two of rest on Mustang’s couch.

 

 

 

_**Munich, 11th of June 1924** _

Ed’s not exactly sure how he bears it. Nobody knew until now. Of course, Gracia had known that not-Mustang was his professor, but she hadn’t _known_. Not like Al would have _known_ or maybe Noah would’ve _known_.

Mustang’s doppelgänger is — just his luck, some entity must be laughing at him, intent on causing Ed as much misery as possible, without taking care to see that maybe Ed’s actually done some fucking good in his short, miserable life — his superior. Well, he’s Ed’s chemistry professor. Chemistry just so happens to be one of the classes Ed spends the most time in. He knows all the basics of it, knows more than not-Mustang. The Gate had provided him with an even more thorough understanding of all the physical sciences that then pre-human-transmutation research had.

The Gate. Sometimes referred to as the ultimate Truth. It had been merciful — or as merciful as a seemingly non-sentient object could be — when they’d jumped through it from Amestris to Germany, leaving all the objects on his person intact after the journey.

It hadn’t been much, but then again, Ed guessed that Mustang had been carrying it on his person more or less always. One of the things is a note — barely long enough to be called a letter, written in hasty Xingese. There’s no real content in it, just some bullshit update about what’s been going on in Amestris. Ed knew all of it by heart by now.

Ed … Ed cares a lot for the bastard, even if he doesn’t want to admit it out loud. They’d developed something akin to friendship in the last few months before everything went to hell.

Maybe it was because they were literally the two in the lead of a nation-wide revolution against a superhuman corrupt government.

The bed in his room is too wide for one person, but it had been ideal for when Hohenheim had built him new prosthetics for his ports the first time he’d been chucked into Munich by the Gate.

It had been nice, and even though the man had been a bastard, it had been nice to have someone in Germany that spoke Amestrian. And now, he’s dead. Gone. Both of his parents perished at last.

His mind wanders back to Roy, to how he had looked: the eyepatch, with even paler skin than the last time Ed had seen him, how the softness that had given him a babyface had vanished. The memory of the eyepatch sticks.

He wants to know exactly what had happened; wants to run his fingers over Mustang’s face to ensure that he’s okay after Ed vanished the first time.

Ed turns around with a frustrated growl. It’s two in the fucking morning and he needs to get up soon to get ready for his 8 am lab with professor not-Mustang.

With a sigh, he sits up so that he can see the way the shine from the moon has splayed itself over his desk and the floor. The windowsill in his bedroom is just large enough for him to perch comfortably on it.

Is it nighttime in Amestris now? Is it summer, like in Munich. A cool June night with the moon lighting up the cities?

The summers in Central are brutal as early in the year as early as June, but by July they’re unbearable. Ed’s not sure why it’s exactly the Central summers he’s complaining about. It’s worse in the East.

The German summers are milder, filled with alternating sunny days and mild, refreshing rain.

Ed sighs and presses his face to the cool glass pane, wishing for once that a thing at least _resembling_ alchemy existed here, that there was a way to detach his soul like Al seemed to be able to.

Going back to sleep would be an exercise in futility, and while the heavy weight of the blankets would be reassuring, Ed was almost entirely sure he would only feel trapped.

The sound of his automail is anything but quiet as he quickly pads into the kitchen. It’s too hot outside for tea, even in the middle of the night, so Ed settles for a glass of water instead.

The sound of a door creaking open catches Ed’s frail attention and he’s half standing by the time Al appears in the doorway to his room. He makes his way over to the table and sits opposite him, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Brother? Are you okay?”

“It’s a lot,” Ed says, before pausing. How does he explain that his brain is twisting around itself on every corner; how he has to fight the urge to either call out or grit his teeth at the sight of people he recognises on the street? How his heart aches every time he walks into this chemistry class and sees not-Mustang smirking at him.

“Seeing people we know, but not really,” he adds on as way of explanation.

Al nods understandingly. “Yeah.”

A sleepy smile, and, “Seems like you can’t escape the General, Brother. First your superior officer and now he’s your professor. Is he the same?”

Ed’s teeth grit and Al laughs, quiet as to not wake Noah. “Just as annoyingly infuriating I probably know more about chemistry than him thanks to the Gate, and the only thing holding me back is the language barrier.”

He misses Mustang. _Fuck_. It shouldn’t hurt this much.

Should it?

“He doesn’t notice that he’s digging his nails into the palm of his flesh hand until Al cries out and forcibly splays Ed’s hand onto the kitchen table to avoid further unintentional harm.

“Brother! Are you okay?”

Ed bites his lip. Is he? “Yeah,” he manages. “Just thinking. I wanna get back to Amestris. This country isn’t exactly … the greatest.”

_He should tell Al._

_He should really tell Al._

_He should very really tell Al._

“That guy,” Ed says, before stopping. He sounds stupid. “That guy, Adolf Hitler. He — he could be very bad to come across again. He worked with the Thule Society and knows of me. Personally. I kinda ruined his plans and though he is in prison right now, neither of us should really cross his path ever again, especially since we look similar and share a last name.”

_He should really tell Al._

_He should really, honestly tell Al._

“He’d have me shot on sight and it’s not just because I’m a troublemaker that fucked up his plans for world domination or some shit.”

Ed pauses, tightens his automail grip on the empty water glass. “This country is really unfriendly when it comes to diversity. Mentally ill people, disabled, gypsies, black people — you know the sorts.”

_He should tell Al._

_But why — why is it so hard to?_

“I’m gay, Al.”

Al stares blankly at him before he starts laughing again, this time likely loud enough to wake up Noah, if not the rest of the apartment complex.

It takes a minute before he calms down, but when he does, Ed stares right into the eyes of his little brother, who says, “I know. I have for a while now.”

Ed stares at him. “Huh?”

As long as Al didn’t know about _Mustang_ , it would all be fine.

It would. All. Be. Fine.

Somehow.

“There’s just … I always knew. It’s not _terribly_ obvious or anything, but I think I it’s something I’ve just always known and really never thought about. I thought — in the beginning, you’d end up marrying Winry or something, but you never seemed to be attracted to her or seemed to care more for her than a friend or a sister.”

Ed shrugs. Now that he thinks about it, that might well be true. “I guess you’re right.”

He heaves a sigh and stands to put his glass in the sink. “You should go back to bed, Al. I have an 8 am class and you promised to help out the next-door neighbour with something.”

With that, Ed presses a gentle kiss to the crown of Al’s unruly bedhead before heading to his bedroom, now almost praying for pleasant dreams to take him out of his momentary misery.

It feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders, however. Telling Al that — everything. It feels good, feels _light_. But even though their conversation had been in Amestrian, and even though this apartment is _safe_ , Ed’s military instincts have long ago kicked in to convince him that nowhere is truly a calm refuge.

It’s an odd mindset to be in, but when he lays down on top of the blankets covering his bed, Ed realises that maybe that feeling — the feeling of wishing for complete safety, is what longing feels like.

 

 

 

_**Munich, 24th of September 1924** _

With Al attending university as well now (studying languages so that they can teach each other their findings), their life has established a strange routine. Noah works as a barmaid in some pub as well as helping out in Gracia’s flower shop. From that, she doesn’t even earn much, but with Ed having taken up paid tutoring as well, they earn enough to get by with no real trouble.

Or, as well as they can with the hyperinflation.

Both Ed and Al now have classes that start at 8 four days of the week. The disadvantage of this is that they have to get up early. The looming advantage, however, is that they have a three-day weekend to do their own research on how to get back to Amestris.

It’s Tuesday, which means that it’s Al’s turn to make breakfast while Ed researches and packs their bags for class. It’s a surprisingly good system.

And as Al stands there, pouring coffee into their mugs, he hears the humming of a song coming from Ed’s room.

It’s not any language he knows, which must mean that it’s Xingese. The intonation, from what Al can grasp, sounds similar to the muttered curses that Ed lets out when kicking certain table legs.

Al opens his mouth to speak; to call Ed in for food, but after a second, he reconsiders. Ed sounds happy and then Al sure as heck isn’t going to ruin his mood by calling him out on the singing. However, the reappearance of continuous Xingese brings back the question about his brother and Mustang.

A glance at the clock makes it feel like Al’s heart has stopped. “Ed! We’re going to be late!”

Time, though it is ever-moving at the seemingly same pace, has the annoying tendencies to catch up on them. Contrary to popular belief, neither of their abilities to keep track of time hasn’t gotten better over the years. In fact, it might’ve just gotten worse.

Ed skids into the kitchen with his automail hand clutching a dishevelled stack of paper while attempting (and failing) to button up his waistcoat with the other. His hair is loose and hanging down like a curtain around his panicked face. If Al hadn’t been feeling exactly how Ed looked in that moment, he would’ve laughed at the sight.

“How did we not notice that it was this late already?” Ed mutters in a broken mix of Amestrian and German that normally Al would’ve chided him for.

Their coffee mugs are still standing on the counter and Al watches Ed grab his before drinking it.

Al blinks, and then _snorts_ , because—

“If you would be so kind as to not drink _my_ coffee, Brother.”

Ed’s eyes widen, but instead of spitting it out, he just swears and throws the papers into one of their bags. “Fuck off. It’s too early.”

 

* * *

 

 

They leave the house two minutes after that, with Al still chuckling at Ed’s misfortune and Ed glaring at everything in sight.

At least it’s not screaming. Al supposes he could be content with that. “I’d like to come with you today, I think.”

Ed looks at him. “I don’t think you’d understand any of it. Like I told you, German and science is a horror mix even for _my_ brain.”

Al pulls out some of the notes Ed had chucked into his bag. They’re French verbs and adjectives. Al’s not sure why he looks at them; he’s known how to use all of these words for ages and this sheet is from the third lecture this semester. “I’m sure I’ll be able to at least grasp some concepts. I know almost all of the things you learn about, but in Amestrian, not German. I bet it’d be a good learning experience too, learning more science-based language. You can take the important notes and I’ll write vocabulary lists.”

Ed snorts. “That sounds like something you’d do, Al. Do that. Enjoy yourself.”

That comment deserves a poke and Ed only barely manages to stifle the yelp. “Al! That was my rib.”

“I know,” Al says cheerfully. “Whatever did you say about your lecture?”

Ed’s glaring and Al’s grinning. Ed shakes his head and continues. “Yeah. Like I said, if the material won’t be annoying and confusing, then the professor will. I swear, professor-Mustang is even more of a nightmare than C.O-Mustang.”

He makes a grab for one of the sheets from Al’s stack and hums as he looks through the verbs.

That makes sense, Ed had probably brought them along for his own learning, not Al’s.

“You’ve come quite far on your French studies. I’m impressed. Once you get a bit further, start teaching me. It’ll make you improve, and I’ll learn more too. Practice speaking it ‘n’ all that.”

“I will,” Al promises as he takes the right at the intersection where they usually split ways. “Sometimes it gets hard, especially in the more practical lessons where we talk to each other, especially since I’m not fluent in German. It’s not like anyone else in this entire world speaks Amestrian.”

Al grimaces. “I’ve had to dodge a few awkward questions regarding that.”

Ed looks at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Al looks around them for something to keep his eyes on. “Like, I don’t hide that I’m not fluent in German, because I’m not. So I tried to explain that we’re from this actually tiny place in the middle of nowhere where the only normal hair and eye colour is similar to ours and that guaranteed that none of the people there would think I spoke their language.”

Ed rubs at his face and almost walks into another student on the path up to the chemistry building. A brief ‘sorry’ and he’s back to talking. “I wish that it was easier to explain this. _Fuck_ , I can’t wait until we get out of this shithole and back home.”

He opens the door for Al and Al steps inside to see Clause standing by one of the doors talking to a man with raven-black hair and a stack of papers in one hand.

“There he is,” Ed mutters under his breath. “Come with me and I’ll explain why the hell he suddenly has an extra student today.”

Clause’s the one who spots them first and she waves cheerfully. Al waves back and looks to Ed to see if it’s okay if he goes talking to Clause while he talks to the not-General. A nod, and Al steps in Clause’s direction. “Hi, Clause! How are you?”

Clause smiles and holds some of the papers she’s carrying close to her chest. “Hey! Al, right? I’ve been good. It’s been a while. Your German has improved now, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Al agrees. “I go to school now, too. Here at the university, actually.”

“You look a bit young,” Clause says, and her tone is careful but inquisitive. “You’re not in high school or anything then?”

Al’s been prepared for this and knows how to answer to it now. “No. I look quite a bit younger because I was really sick when I was little and it sort of stunted my growth a bit. I’m all better now though, but I’m a little behind. I’m actually eighteen.”

Before Clause has the time to answer, Ed’s tapping his back and Al turns.

“Hey,” Ed says, in Amestrian. “The bastard says it’s okay for you to come with us, but he’d like for the two of you to be ‘formally’ introduced or somethin’. I dunno what he wants from you, but go ahead and be your friendly, polite self, Al.”

“Just because I know how to not rub people the entirely wrong way, Brother,” Al says as way of warning before turning to face Roy Mustang’s doppelgänger.

He looks the same, perhaps with fewer scars. There’s no eyepatch and the only major detail is the dark undereye bags this version of Mustang is sporting. Apparently being a professor is harder work than many people see on the outside.

"Good morning," Al greets not-Mustang politely. "Thank you for letting me attend your lesson today, sir."

Not-Mustang smiles at him, and to his right, Al can hear Ed scoff. "It is truly not a bother. Edward here is one of my better students, and I don't particularly mind having other students joining my class for a lesson for curiosity's sake."

He reaches out a hand. _Gloved_ , Al notices. That seems to be the custom in university here among professors. And Ed. Al takes it and shakes it. "Alphonse Elric, sir."

"Roy Mustang." Mustang lets go of his hand and Al pulls it back to adjust his bag that's resting on his shoulder. "So, Alphonse, do you study here or are you still a bit too young for that?"

"I'm a first-year linguistics student here," Al says. "I know it might not look a lot like it, but there is actually only one year and a few months in between me and my brother. Circumstances made it look like a more significant age gap, however."

Mustang smiles at him, and Al's pretty sure that either this Mustang isn't quite awake yet or just so happens to be an entirely more pleasant person. Maybe the slight behavioural change is due to the fact that professor Mustang doesn't know the weight and extent of their sins, doesn't know all their wrongdoings and therefore can't judge them for such a thing. That seems more to be the case.

Al knows that this Mustang has also faced war, but he doesn't know how. Had he been a frontline soldier in the trenches between Germany and France? Or had he been a chemical scientist behind the army Germany had during the war? Was there an ever-so-small chance that this Mustang had only been a civilian trying to teach his students even through the war-times when death was lurking behind every corner ready for the first opportunity of ambush?

"I would love to stand around here and talk with you, your brother and Clause, but it seems like time has run from us and it's time to start the lecture. I really hope you do enjoy it, Alphonse. Take care."

And with that, Mustang turns and walks back towards the door while searching for a key in his bag. Al turns to Ed and smiles at his brother's exasperated expression. "Oh, come on, Ed. He's not that bad."

He switches to Amestrian. "In fact, I think he was actually really quite nice. He doesn't know the weight of our sins and therefore cannot use that in his assessment of us. He's actually really polite. And yes, I know you would like to have none of them in your life, but you should agree with me, Brother, that he's actually not that bad when you stop being prejudicial with everyone you meet here. They all have different stories and alternating personalities from what we knew in Amestris."

"Yeah," Ed says, but Al's convinced that his brother hadn't really heard a single word of what he'd been saying. He grabs Ed by the arm and hauls him into the lab. "Come on, Brother. We made it here on time, and let's not be late by walking the last three metres into the room."

 

 

 

_**Central, 1915** _

"You should stop practising Xingese in the office," Mustang says suddenly one day.

Ed looks up incredulously. "Huh?"

Mustang looks at him and there's something in his eyes that puts Ed on edge. "It's not official military business for you to learn another language, which makes it an unseemly waste of time in office. Besides, it's more than common knowledge that your area of interests and expertise falls solely under alchemy and its related branches of science. Having you study a language in here is suspicious."

Well, _shit_ , Ed hadn't thought of it that way.

"I suppose you're right," Ed says slowly. He slams that book shut, making Mustang jump before chucking it in general direction of the coffee table. "D'you have any assignments for me then since I can't continue my 'unseemly waste of time'? If I can't bother you further by butchering Xingese, I might as well go make myself by doing some fuck-knows what military business."

Mustang looks through his impressively tall stack of papers, likely for some easy research assignment. “I have a few non-urgent ones here. Take your pick. Would you like a hands-on one or something more research-based?”

That’s not even a question in Ed’s world right now. “Research.”

That makes Mustang blink in surprise and he narrows his eyes. Ed grits his teeth angrily. Mustang’s worried about him again and it makes something deep in his chest get just a decimal point on the Celsius scale warmer. “I’m fine, you bastard. I just don’t wanna be out in shitty weather like this all day.”

That was, admittedly true. It’s the middle of November, and along with it came the heavy rain showers followed by fog and brief glimpses of dreary sunlight.

But Ed had also been discharged from the East City Military Infirmary only days earlier after an assignment gone wrong.

His ribs hurt, _sure_ , and the sutured cut on his thigh stung every time he put any kind of pressure on his leg. If he had really wanted to, he could have easily handled a practical assignment. But…

But for some _odd_ and _peculiar_ reason, being admitted to the hospital for the second time in a month doesn’t sound appealing.

“If you say so,” Mustang eventually says. “Come here. The details of your assignment are in this folder. I expect it completed with a written report of your findings by the end of the week.”

Ed reads through it and snorts. This project is ridiculously easy— decoding a few circles some alchemist had left after his untimely passing. If he had put his mind to it, these circles could be done in a matter of hours. Writing the report takes a while longer, but Ed’s sure that if he really tried, the assignment could be done in a day, maybe a day and a half depending on how his ribs and thigh would impact his concentration.

To any other person knowing what Ed’s capable of, it might sound odd that Mustang gives him this much time.

But Ed hears the words Mustang doesn’t say; hears the invitation that gives Ed free reign to research the corruption within the military to see how deep it goes; hears the order to learn Xingese so that they have a more secure way of communication than through unspoken words and long looks filled with paragraphs of meaning.

 _Shit_. That sounds like some romantic bullshit. Ed’s not sure how he feels about that.

 _Well._ He feels … something, but he’s not sure what. He doesn’t intend to find out.

And it’s not romantic in the slightest. It’s a fight; together, with the small team they’ve assembled to fight the shit their country keeps throwing in their faces at every opportunity.

It’s a unity of wills, powered on by rock-hard ideals and dreams for the future. It’s the burning fire within everyone in their small group of rebels that are tired of being deceived and used just because some supernatural bitches are of the opinion that humans are weak and useless on their own.

That they are nothing more than mere toys to play with and assemble as they wish in the big dollhouse they’ve built for themselves.

It’s not like that.

“I should have a book in my library that might contain some of the information you’re looking for,” Mustang says, and he’s looking at Ed with a small smile that speaks volumes of what he’s _actually_ saying. _My library is free ground for you to study Xingese._ “It’s a common book, and I know for a fact that both the university library and the military library rarely have it in their shelves due to its popularity among both military staff in Investigations, state alchemists and university students alike.”

Ed only grins, and that’s _his_ reply. Spending a day at Mustang’s while mooching off his food doesn’t sound half bad. “We’ll see, bastard. For all you know, I have the book myself and I won’t need to borrow it from you.”

But his grin says that they should meet up and plan the imminent revolution brewing on the horizon. Had Ed been of age, they would have gone to a bar, where the noise levels are high, and people are unlikely to listen in on your conversations. But Ed isn’t old enough for that yet ( _one year to go_ , he thinks wistfully some nights when his brain screams at him. But no, he won’t succumb to the bottle like Mustang sometimes does to drown out the worst of him. He _won’t_.).

 

* * *

 

 

They meet at Mustang’s house instead once a week. Sometimes they’re joined by Riza or Havoc, and sometimes it’s the entire team.

On the outside, it looks like any other get-together, with all of them making food together before sitting down to eat and discuss the week’s events.

Forming close relationships with the people you share an office with isn’t uncommon in the military. They’re the people you see every day, except for weekends where the stacks of paperwork are low enough to take a day off.

Your office mates, especially when under an alchemist, are some of your closest when going out in the field. It’s vital to have a strong bond because the military is all of their coffins. There’s always that chance that when you go, it’s by your team-mates’ sides.

Ed knows of a few other divisions that have weekly, or bimonthly meetings somewhere. Theirs just is a little more unique.

The meetings at Mustang’s house are a place to catch-up meeting where everyone can share whatever information and rumours they’ve heard throughout the week.

Ed _tries_ to make it to every meeting, even though he often ends up stumbling through the front door battered, bruised and exhausted, often with wounds still trickling sluggishly with blood somewhere on his body.

These weekly meetings are calming in a way that little else is. Having the chance to hang out with the team outside of work lets him see more of their personalities. Riza knows some really good jokes he usually tells Al after the meetings.

Whenever Ed looks in the mirror and has the thought at the back of his mind that tells him to _just give up, it’s not worth it anyways. You will never be able to restore your brother’s body back to what it was_ , he knows that there’s little life left in him; little energy to fight. But he struggles on, because to him, these meetings are like an oasis in the desert.

Ed’s been offered a permanent space on the rug next to the fireplace, where he cleans and bandages his wounds while letting his automail heat to the point where the muscles in his legs stop spasming and tensing.

More than once, Mustang and Riza have needed to help him when there’s a wound that’s too big or too deep or in the wrong place.

He prefers Mustang over Riza. Surprisingly, he’s gentler than her with Ed. Always talking in that smooth, soft voice of his that washes over Ed like a warm wind.

Though he’s a bastard, he’s respectful to Ed when they’re not in the office. Bastardly, smarmy Mustang and yelling Edward is mostly a façade at this point anyway.

Ed’s decided that he likes the gentle, respectful Mustang more.

 

* * *

 

 

Three days later, on the Friday where they’ve all agreed to meet, Ed’s not injured (or at least not any more than he had been on Tuesday) and it improves the atmosphere of the apartment by a distinct notch or two.

He’s still taken up his usual spot by the fire, however, because outside the rain is pouring and his automail still gets cold when exposed to the winter air, even if he’s been stationary and researching in the city all week. He’s looking over the research report Mustang had requested for the array decryption. Ed frowns. “ _Hey, bastard, I hope you’re in the mood for some weekend reading, because this thing is gonna be long. Turns out there was a fair bit to write about those dumb arrays that Kelley guy left behind._ ”

Roy pops his head out the kitchen looking appalled. “You accent is detestable. Who taught you such a travesty?”

Ed _grins_ ; he’d spoken Xingese on purpose and he starts cackling when the rest of the team looks between them.

He stands up, piles together all the papers, pulls the paperclip from where’s it’s been resting clipped to his hair-tie. While clipping it to the report, Ed stalks over to Mustang. His grin is all teeth as he shoves the report to the bastard’s chest. “My accent’s only as bad as you teach it to me, nitwit.”

Roy— since when had he become Roy? —looks scandalised too, but then the grin creeps onto his face and the team starts to laugh along with them. Soon, laughter is bouncing off the walls of the small townhouse.

There’s something fond in Roy’s eyes, but whether or not that’s because of _him_ , Ed can’t really tell. Maybe it doesn’t even really matter.

The moment is broken by Kain’s distressed yelp of, “The sauce!” and the laughter dies as Ed, Jean and Roy flocks around the stove to do damage control on the food.

The sauce happens to be fine, and luckily, so is the rest of their food.

 

* * *

  

“What language is it the Boss learnt now?” Jean asks through a mouthful of food later. Ed scoffs— as if he’s been around learning languages like nobody’s business _before_ this entire revolution thing began. “It sounded odd.”

“It’s Xingese,” Ed and Roy say at the same time, Roy with some semblance of elegance and charm and Ed like he was discussing yesterday’s weather.

“Whoah!” Kain says and Vato nods along with his statement. “Xingese is a whole other written language too, isn’t it? That must be really hard to learn.”

“It’s fine. Despite being a smarmy-ass bastard, he’s actually a good teacher,” Ed says, briefly jabbing a thumb in Roy’s direction before pushing a large piece of meat into his mouth, chewing it only halfway before swallowing. “It’s not really an issue reading it— it’s the spoken language that’s a bitch to learn. If you mess up one sound, you might accidentally go insult someone’s grandma.”

“I do hope teaching Edward a whole other language isn’t affecting your productivity at work or at home, _sir_ ,” Riza says and she meets Roy’s eyes as she speaks, likely dealing out some close-friendship-telepathy filled with meaning.

Then Roy— looks away for just the briefest of seconds, and that’s a characteristic loss for him combined with the brief look of vulnerability. He must have realised something. But then the mask is back on and Ed’s almost convinced that he’s the only one managing to pick up the very finest detail of the two’s silent exchange. “Don’t worry, Riza. I am getting all my work done.”

The tone is flatter than it had been minutes ago, and it’s putting press on the atmosphere in the room. Ed snorts. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Two weeks ago you had like four floors of ‘urgent’-stamped paperwork and you were trying to teach me advanced past tense grammar patterns while I waited for my train to East City to leave.”

“Past tense grammar is vital to learning a language,” Roy says without missing a beat. “And besides, one would think that someone of your stature wouldn’t be able to see the top of such a pile if it was to exist in the first place.”

Ed grinds his teeth, itching to come back at him, but it’s late on a Friday night and he’s too tired for a play-make believe fight with Mustang at this time.

Al’s in Resembool with Winry for the weekend (half because there Al could do research away from the watchful eye of the military and half because it’s Al and _Winry_.) Roy’s offered him his spare room so that he can avoid the damp and depressing military dorms. So he only flips Roy the finger and continues emptying his plate at alarming speeds.

Riza, Jean and Vato start discussing … something— Ed’s not really paying close attention anymore, because he’s quite full, exhausted and— content? The underlying anxiety that comes with a military job is still there of course, but being here, around people that he at least somewhat trusts, laughing and talking— in nice. Really nice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those damn kitchen counters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't looked through this since I did a bare-bone edit last week. There's bound to be some grammatical and contextual errors, but I'll try to look through it once this story is done. Yeah.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> (Part five may be delayed since this moron is _still_ writing it!)

**_Munich, 24th of September_ **

“That was really fascinating,” Al says as they walk back from the chemistry lecture. “He’s a good teacher. And from what I picked up he does seem more content than the General, but then again, this version of him has only been through one war, not several.”

He glances down at his bag. “I think you were right, Brother. The science language is a bit beyond my comprehension at this point, but it was still really interesting to learn what I did manage to pick up.”

Ed hums noncommittally. “True true. He _is_ one of the better professors, alright. I just wish…” he trails off and doesn’t continue.

“Wish what?” Al asks, making sure to level Ed with a look that says _I don’t want any bullshit from you_.

“I wish it wasn’t him,” Ed says, tone flat and seething of finality. “Drop it and rather take in the information from the lecture that you understood. We need to find a way to start building the circle so that we can get home from this hellhole.”

Al snorts, but his mind’s reeling with Ed’s hasty mood swings. It could be an after-effect of this morning’s chaos, but somehow, Al doubts it. “Oh yes, let’s take some shallow information we have and apply it to pure theory with no way of testing it before we’ll have to jump through a potentially unstable portal at some unspecified time in the future. Of course, why not?”

Ed elbows him (with the automail one; which means that Al must really deserve it). “Oh, shut it with your hormones. You’re not allowed to sarcasm me around, even though you’re an eighteen-year-old stuck in a fourteen-year-old’s body. I wasn’t like that when I was your age, so you’re not allowed to be a brat either.”

Al laughs, and Ed’s grinning in that way that tells that he’s in a good mood again. Sometimes Ed’s mood swings can be dizzying, but Al’s learnt to, if not predict them, at least be able to handle them.

“You’ve been a brat since you joined the military, and now you’re nineteen—” Ed grimaces as Al says it, because it’s _true_. “—so technically I have seven years of brattiness to cash in on before we’re even.”

“I should’ve never let you learn alchemy. Having you follow the principle of Equivalent Exchange is the worst idea in the history of mankind.” Ed smiles at Gracia as they walk past her shop. “But never mind all that. How ‘bout we take a look at the circles when we get back inside— see what we know and what we need to research. I have a full illustration of the circle Eckhart used, so at least we have a basic clue of what we need to open the portal in the first place.”

 

* * *

 

They have an established routine by now; Ed makes coffee and Al goes on the great hunt of scratch paper and research notes that they try to keep hidden from ordinary people’s view.

Ed had been adamant on that front. They weren’t _really_ concerned about anyone decoding their notes, because as far as the average citizen here was concerned, alchemy as a concept was a load of rubbish best saved for children’s fairy tales.

The real concern was that the notes were coded in the first place. Germany wasn’t a free country.

A decade earlier, a war had been ravaging this country — roughly at the same time as the Ishvalan war of extermination. If someone were to see that they kept extensive amounts of ciphered notes in their apartment…

Al’s rifling through the notes box they keep hidden under Ed’s bed— where Ed’s alchemical and scientific journal from this side are kept safely. Along with the books and papers are a few of Ed’s keepsakes that he had kept on him before leaping back through the portal the last time. It’s hidden within a closed box within the crate.

Al doesn’t know exactly what’s in it; he respects Ed’s privacy.

“Hey, Al?” Ed pops his head through the door to the room. “Do you need anything to eat?”

Al thinks for a moment while sorting out the relevant papers. It _had_ been a while since they’d last eaten.

“Yes,” he decides. “I think that would be a good idea.”

“Cool cool,” Ed says. “Want me to take some of the notes for you? They look quite heavy.”

There’s that concern Ed seems to display for him; that Al’s sick in some way and might just vanish if Ed’s not concerned and mother-hen-y enough.

Al smiles and shakes his head. “No thank you, Brother. I can manage this just fine. But thank you for the kind offer.”

Ed leaves and Al stands up with his arms piled full of notes, books and the odd stationery item. He waddles back into the kitchen, where he finds Ed by the counter, pouring coffee into two mugs. They’re newly decorated, with one of them spelling ‘EDWARD’ in black paint on one of them and ‘ALPHONSE’ on the other to avoid confusion.

Next to Ed, there’s a plate piled high with sandwiches and on his way, Al manages to balance the papers well enough to snatch a piece of the food.

There is already a not-so-small stack of papers atop the kitchen table. Al glances at them while chewing and recognises them as Ed’s lecture notes from the past few weeks.

“It’s times like this where I miss Amestris even more,” Ed says from behind him and Al turns, now with his hands free. He accepts his mug from Ed and sips it. The coffee is warm and strong and pretty much perfect.

“Why?”

“This place is fascinating as hell, and what they do with the physical sciences is fucking cool. But it feels fake. Feels like a dollhouse of sorts, where someone has replaced everything and everyone with something else that’s almost the same but not quite. Like having blood running through your veins, but that the blood doesn’t carry haemoglobin—”

Al lets out a sound of surprise and almost drops a mug in his frenzy as he grapples for a pen and paper to sketch down what has just dropped face-first into his head.

Ed frowns. “You okay there, kid?”

“Blood!” Al says, waving around his free hand as way of explanation, but Ed only looks more confused.

“…Blood?”

He steps up behind Al close enough so that Al can feel Ed’s breath on his neck. He can hear the cogs turning in Ed’s brain as he glances down at the scribbled notes and diagrams Al’s writing in the horror combination of Amestrian and German their notes have slowly become. “Bloo— _oh_!”

Ed grabs a pen and together they start sketching on the same sheet of paper.

“Al,” Ed breathes as he takes in the circles on the page in front of them. “ _Al_. You’re a fucking genius. I didn’t even _think_ about the blood. D’you reckon it’d have to be the blood from a homunculus though? Since Envy and Wrath—?”

He freezes up and Al bites back the curse word springing to mind because he’s not one of them prone to swearing but _fuck._ Ed hadn’t really thought about that; had repressed it to the back of his mind, hadn’t let it keep him up at night; hadn’t—

 

* * *

 

Ed feels like _dying_ , because so many of the people he knows have. Teacher, Wrath (though their relationship had never really been good to begin with), _mom_.

He doesn’t let himself think about it, hadn’t let himself really taken death into the account when thinking about going home. It only really assaults his mind when he’s laying in bed feeling nothing apart from _empty_.

Those moments, when he’s staring into the specked bathroom mirror wondering why the shadows under his eyes are so dark, when he’s out at the beer hall drinking, when he’s laying in bed awake when the rest of the world is deafeningly quiet, is when Ed wonders if the Gate had actually taken something else from him that he just hadn’t noticed yet.

Maybe it’s something with his brain; his ability to produce sufficient amounts of serotonin or dopamine or _whatever_.

“I think that normal blood should work,” Al says and it almost stops the freight train of thoughts racing through Edward’s brain. “The first time the Thule Society— or well, _you_ —opened the portal between here and there, no human lives were lost to the Gate. Besides, Eckhart was aiming for sending through entire armies. We’re two people and a suitcase or two to bring back the stuff from here.”

Al writes down a couple of calculations on the paper, but Ed isn’t fully paying attention. “I think we’d only need enough blood to keep the portal open for five or so minutes before we need an array to destruct the circle on this side so that it cannot ever be used again.”

Ed forces his brain to cooperate despite its slow spiralling into the murky depths of his sins, of his wrongdoings, of the worst nightmares he’s faced and scribbles down a list of what would need to happen when they were ready to go back.

            1) Draw the arrays

            2) Blood

            3) Activate

            4) Go through

            5) Self-destruct

            6) Not die

The last point isn’t really necessary, but Ed adds it anyway.

He chews at the end of his pen, thoughtful. “You do realise that we only get this one chance to do this. If we fuck this up, we’ll be claimed by the Gate and then we’re _dead_. Never get to anyone we care about ever again.”

He hadn’t intended to say that, but his brain is too far gone to hide what he’s been thinking all along for Al anymore.

“Brother!” Al chides, and it’s a reprimand, but it’s so coated in sadness it’s a wonder Al isn’t choking on it. “Don’t talk like that! We can’t— we can’t afford to be pessimistic now that we’re this close! We can’t afford to believe that there’s even a chance we might not see Winry or Granny or Rosé or Gracia again. We can’t just stop now that we’re this close, just because there’s that ever-present chance that it might not work. If we’d done that, we’d be dead years ago because we simply _gave up_. And if we do fail, it’ll still be worth the attempt because at least then we _did our best_. That’s what they all want us to do. They want us to come back to them safe and sound and they’re believing in us, in _both of us_ , to do our _fucking_ best to find a way back. You can’t just give up now because it’s hard! That’s never stopped you before! Would _Winry_ want you to give up? Would Elicia or Hawkeye want you to give up?”

Ed takes a step back because Al’s angry and crying and accusingly pointing a finger at him.

“Would _Roy_ want you to give up, Edward, just because you’re faced with a dangerous challenge?”

Ed freezes and Al seems to realise what he’s said, because he steps back, out of Ed’s personal space.

Ed’s mind is trying to run in thirteen different directions at once. He hunches his shoulders and walks over to the closest kitchen chair, slumps into it and covers his face with both hands, letting the pen drop to the floor. He tries to take even breaths, but they come out shaking and he _can’t_ do this.

His brain cannot possibly take any more of this uncertainty, of everybody’s expectations on him, on how everyone wants him to save the day yet again and find a way back to them.

He tries to breathe again, and it’s shuddering. His hands are working without the guidance of his brain, gripping his bangs and pulling the strands tight between metal and flesh fingers.

“Al,” he whispers. “Al— I can’t. Oh god, _Al_.”

There are wet tears falling onto his pants, staining the brown fabric closer to black.

There’s something in his throat blocking his breath, and he’s getting lightheaded because there’s not enough oxygen travelling to his brain from his lungs. Maybe his earlier comparison with this world had been correct; maybe blood here doesn’t have haemoglobin to carry oxygen around the body.

A dim, slow part of his brain knows what Al must be seeing now. Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist in front of him, crying his feelings out in front of him, shallow shuddering breaths interrupted by agonised sobs. His _brother_ , who has mood swings a mile wide, who seems to bounce from happiness to anger and back in a matter of a second.

Ed knows all this; is more in tune with how he comes off to others than people might expect.

But most of all, he knows what Al must be thinking.

His brother is in front of him. His brother, who _doesn’t cry._

Al’s trying to get his attention but isn’t touching him.

_Good,_ the same piece of his brain supplies. _At least he knows how to react when someone that has boatloads of trauma and issues breaks down in front of him._

For some people, though, touch probably helps. But not Ed. He doesn’t want to lash out at his brother in the fits of his despair.

“Brother?” Al’s voice is soft and Ed can barely hear it over the roaring in his ears, from the sobs clouding his hearing. “I’m so sorry, Brother. I— I didn’t mean to make you cry. Oh god, I’m sorry— I’m on edge too and I know that’s not an excuse and I don’t want it to be and I know that all of this is tough. It’s for me too. I didn’t mean to get upset with you and— and mentioning the General was a really low blow. I’m so sorry, Brother, I really am. Please forgive me. I really really didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Ed forces his body to cooperate and looks up, sees the wretched expression on Al’s face. He looks a right mess too and Ed can see the pearlescent sheen of tears in Al’s lashes.

“You … you know then,” Ed manages, and it seems he’s caught Al off guard because he only nods slowly.

“If we’re talking about the same thing, then yes. I think I do.”

“And… and you don’t mind?”

Ed’s pretty sure that Al’s known for longer than he lets on.

Strangely, he doesn’t mind.

“You don’t mind any of it?”

Al steps backwards, leans towards the kitchen counter and starts laughing. Tears are still rolling down his cheeks and he’s got a hiccup from the abuse to his throat, lungs and midsection from talking, crying and now laughing at the same time.

“Being in Germany for the last ten months hasn’t impaired my ability to tell right from wrong, and I know that love and sexuality is rarely wrong. I’ll admit that it’s _odd_ , alright, because he’s older than you by quite a few years and you spent most of your teen years moaning about how much of an infuriating bastard he was. But—”

Al wipes the tears from his face and rubs a hand briefly over his face to look at Ed.

_He looks older_ , Ed notices dimly. More mature, and more like he’s seen life for what it is; seen every aspect of it.

“I spent some time with the General in the years you were gone, while he served as nothing more than an enlisted man up in the North of Amestris, close to the border to Drachma. We talked. He was the one, along with Winry and Granny, that really helped get a view on what it was like travelling around the entirety of Amestris with you. He told me everything from the time you became a state alchemist, to how you were as a person while growing up, to how attached you became to the team, briefly about the weekly rebellion meetings you and the team had at his house. There was something in his eyes; in his speech, that I couldn’t quite pinpoint.”

Ed stares at him because here his brother is in the flesh— something he’s strived for for _years_ —telling him that the vague, uncertain feelings he has— that’s he’s allowed to have them; allowed to feel that way about another person.

“We’ll make it back,” Al promises. “We both have something we want to get back to.”

Ed grins, wipes his tears away, even though he still feels like the insides of him are covered in broken glass. He pulls a stack of paper closer to him. “You just wanna get back to Winry, huh?”

Al blushes and Ed’s grin widens. “I _knew_ it. Well, then we’ll just have to do our best, don’t we? Because I wanna see that look on your face when we meet her again.”

He bends over and picks up the pen he’d dropped earlier. “But first, do your coursework. We need to keep up the appearance of being university students, and if that means writing lab reports and studying for vocab quizzes, then so be it.”

 

 

 

**_Munich, 18th of October 1924_ **

Noah knows everything about what the Elric brothers are trying to do. They’ve let her in on their life on the other side of a gate— in their world. She knows that there’s another version of her there and if it hadn’t been for that the fact that she might endanger her doppelgänger’s life, she would have asked Ed or Al to come with them. This world isn’t kind to people like her.

“What is she like?” She asks them at dinner one October evening. When they look at her, Noah continues. “The other me. The one you know in your world.”

Ed sighs and looks over at Al while popping a piece of potato into his mouth. Noah watches him chew, swallow and look down at his plate with a thoughtful expression for the briefest of moments. “When we first met her, I was fifteen and Al was fourteen. I’d been sent out on assignment from the military to check out this backwater city called Liore to check out some priest supposedly planning the demise of the country.”

Al snorts and continues from where Ed had left off. “After we expose the priest’s real intentions, we had to talk to the other you—”

“Rosé,” Ed supplies.

Al doesn’t mind the interruption: Noah knows the two boys so well that sometimes she wonders if just the two of them have a telepathic power letting them see what the other one is thinking. “Ed was really quite mean to her, telling her to get back on her own to feet and take control of her own life before it was too late. She ended up being— I guess, assaulted by some soldiers and became pregnant with a baby boy. The shell-shock from the event caused her to become mute for a while, but she managed to regain her voice. Her son was three when I last saw him, and the two of them live in our hometown, Resembool with our childhood friend Winry.”

Ed’s eyes get distant and he sighs into his food. “Last time I have her child, he was a few weeks old at most. I can’t believe so much time has passed.”

Noah feels for them. Feels for these two brothers, who like her, has no real home. That are trying so hard, spending late night after late night researching what she can only describe as magic rituals, with symbols and words foreign to her, foreign to this _world_.

“Will you tell me more about your world?” Her mouth asks before her mind catches him. She’s achingly curious about this world, even if she can’t go. “About the people there. About your lives.”

Ed looks to Al and a whole other conversation passes. Noah can almost imagine what they’re saying guessed by their expressions.

            _How much can we tell?_

_We trust her, she’s not going to tell anyone else._

_Pfft, if she tells anyone, they’ll think she’s mad. There’s no such thing as an alternate universe that just happens to resemble this one._

_Do you want to tell her about_ that _thing?_

_Maybe. I’m not sure._

Noah’s not sure how she guesses what they’re thinking, but for some reason, without touching them, she’s almost completely confident that her assessment is correct.

Ed breaks the silence after a few seconds. “It’s pretty much the same as this one. Same people, similar countries and all that. You know a lot of them from reading my dreams already.”

The faintest of blushes appear on Edward’s cheeks and Al smirks. A second later Ed yelps. “Alphonse! Don’t you kick your older brother!”

“Accident,” Al says, the picture of innocence. Noah knows better. “Anyway, Brother. Please do continue.”

Ed sends an offended look in Al direction and leans down to rub his shin. When he reappears, he looks to Noah, still with the inklings of a blush dusting his cheekbones. “You still have to tell me exactly what you saw that one time.”

“Armour,” Noah says immediately, because there’s no point in lying. “A tall suit of armour walking beside you. You were wearing a red coat and tossing a silver pocket watch from hand to hand.”

Edward should know this already because this was the first thing she told him; the catalyst to him believing her power. Al speaks up and Noah looks to him. There’s a barely hidden layer of grief on his face, and Noah knows she’s hit a sensitive spot. “You saw me, then. I was the suit of armour.”

From the way Al looks down at his half-eaten food, Noah confirms her suspicions of this being a topic to tread carefully with. She decides not to continue her pursuit regarding the armour itself and instead decides to turn to the second distinctive part of the vision. “The pocket watch?”

“Military symbol,” Ed says flatly, and he looks disgusted at the mere mention of his old workplace. Noah supposes she can understand that; all militaries have nuances of corruption, and Edward’s strong ideals must not have all been compatible with those of the military. “I’ve got it here. Mustang gave it to me before we got back to Germany. Hang on, I’ll grab it real quick.”

Ed gets up and leaves the room in the search of the pocket watch. Al turns to Noah, his normally mild and gentle expression guarded. “The Amestrian State Military isn’t great. Ed started working for them when he had just turned twelve and I tagged along with him to help out. Brother has a lot of justified distaste for the military considering how— ah, _inhuman_ they were.”

He leans in closer and motions for Noah to come closer as well. “I would advise you to be a bit more careful when talking about General Mustang around Brother. He is quite sensitive about the topic.”

She nods and Al makes to continue but stops talking the second they hear Ed’s mismatched footsteps. He then dutifully returns to eating his vegetables. Ed walks back into the room, looking more than a little upset as he sits down in his chair and tosses the pocket watch from hand to hand in the exact same way Noah had seen him do in her vision.

“This brings back a lot of memories,” Ed says, and Noah understands, because this was the symbol of Edward’s status for years, from when he was only a small child, from when he was parentless and had a single selfless goal to fight and persist for.

He sighs and pops open the lid of the pocket watch, letting out a surprised sound as a piece of paper falls on the table, just barely missing contact with Ed’s mashed potatoes.

Edward picks it up and as Alphonse and Noah watch intently, he opens it. Noah has the satisfaction, although she remains as passive as ever on the outside because from where she sits he can see the note on the paper. Most of it is written in a language she doesn’t recognise, but the scrawl is familiar— she’s seen it in the visions.

Edward bites his lip then, and a look of uncertain giddiness come across his features.

“What’s in the note?” Al asks, voice curious. Ed shrugs and hides the note away in his waistcoat pocket.

Before he has a chance to reply, however, Al picks up the open pocket watch left on the table and Noah watches his face darken and contort with pained understanding and fury.

“Brother?” Al says in German, and from there it’s fast, angry and upset words in their native language. Noah thinks she might hear even two different languages in there, but as she knows neither, she’s not sure.

Edward makes a grab for the pocket watch, slams it closed and puts it in his waistcoat pocket along with the note before snapping something back at Al. Ed stand and stomps, cheeks still red and eyes brimming with unshed tears, out of the kitchen towards his bedroom. Seconds later, she can hear the door slam shut.

Noah turns to Alphonse, but before she can ask what it was about, he cuts her off and there’s something distinctly terrible in Al's voice and in the way his eyebrows are drawn tightly together. “It was about the day we ruined our lives. Brother keeps insisting that it was his fault exclusively, but it’s not true. I participated just as much and was as consenting as him. He—"

Al drags a hand through his hair and Noah sees the heavy guilt and anger sitting in his gut like nausea. “He inscribed the day into the pocket watch so that he would be constantly reminded of his sins. I—"

Noah stands up and before she can stop herself, she’s pulled Al into a tight hug. It seems to be okay, however, because he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close.

They stay like that for a moment before Al pulls away and gets up. The sound of his footsteps fades the closer he gets to his room.

Noah sighs and turns to remove the three half-full plates from the table.

 

 

 

**_Central, 1915_ **

Ever since he first saw the Gate, Ed’s been a lucid dreamer.

There’s little science to back up the entire existence of such a thing, but if Ed can move around in his dreams, either as the protagonist of the event or a person standing outside of the action and just observing the scene in front of him, then it must be a thing.

There’s something distinctively different about this dream, however.

Something that makes it clear it will change and be clearer in his brain than they usually are.

He knows that it will have something to do with Roy. All of his dreams are nowadays.

He wakes up in Roy’s surprisingly nice guest bedroom. The first thing he notices is how the weather outside is surprisingly nice despite the downpour he had met personally the previous day.

The second thing he notices is that the room is fucking _cold_.

He doesn’t know where he’s kicked off his socks throughout the night, so he spends a minute or two trying to locate them while shivering, teeth clattering. The automail is quickly stealing the remaining body warmth he’d had now that he’s no longer nestled under the pile of blankets on the bed.

He finally finds his socks, one hidden within the nooks and crannies of the blanket stack and the other one pursuing a close relationship with the rug next to the bed.

Okay, socks are put on, so now he shouldn’t want to die the second he steps onto the floor. Next priority: a jacket of sorts.

It’s not like he’s some kind of freak when sleeping over: he sleeps in a shirt and pants like any decent person would, but that’s not enough now to keep the November chill away from his bones.

His jacket is hanging on the chair by the window and Ed grabs it and puts it on as fast as humanly possible. There’s a routine to follow in this household. It’s Saturday, which means that he has a day off.

Roy works half-days on Saturdays, starting after lunch.

That means that Ed’s the first one up and he’ll have to light the fireplace, and if he doesn’t get stuck there, make coffee for both of them.

He pads down the stairs as quickly and quietly as he can, because even when he almost-tiptoes, automail covered by a measly sock is still a loud noise on the hardwood staircase.

There’s already firewood stocked in the grate, which means that Roy’s been up sometime in the night. It’s not really anything major; just an acknowledgement from Roy that his nightmares woke him up again and that he needed to get moving in a safe environment. Hence the firewood.

The matches are hidden on the top shelf of the bookshelf in the living room (mainly to prevent Elicia from getting hold of them). Unfortunately, that means he has to drag the nearest moveable chair or stool along with him to reach them.

The matches could easily be placed on the second-highest shelf, and they would have no issues with Elicia getting to them or Edward _not_ getting to them.

Once the fireplace is lit up, Ed grabs his report back from where Roy had left it on the coffee table. He’s already read through it like five times, but once more to fully refresh his memory of every swirl of every circle doesn’t hurt. Besides, the alchemy had been _fascinating_.

 

* * *

 

Ed’s not sure how long he’s been sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace when Roy nudges his right foot with his own.

He looks up; squints for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the difference between reading a barely-legible scrawl at a close proximity and looking at a person further away.

“Good morning,” Roy says. The greeting doesn’t match his expression; doesn’t match the bruises under his eyes and the way his hair is tousled in a way that screams _nightmares_ in every direction twice over.

“You look like shit,” Ed says. His voice is gritty from lack of use and he tries to clear it, to little avail. Seems like a cold has set in him after all.

He needs to keep an eye on that; a case of bronchitis or worse, _pneumonia_ at this time in their fight would be … unfortunate.

Roy raises an eyebrow at him and hands him a steaming mug. “Your elixir of life. Please do not hesitate to be less crass after it.”

Ed sips it, sighs and looks to the bookshelf. “You really gotta stop storing the matches on the highest shelf. It’s a bitch to get to. Do you even have a clue how hard getting up on a chair is when your knee just _isn’t_ cooperating from the fucking cold. In short, automail is heavy and you’re a bastard.”

“Elicia could get to them.”

It’s a final statement, but it’s not one of annoyance. It’s one of protection and worry.

Ed stares at him. “First of all, where is _your_ mug of coffee? You’re being extra worrisome and that’s just scary shit. Second, she’s _three_. I don’t think a three-year-old can climb a chair and reach the second-highest shelf. And, like, Gracia or you’re always watching over her so it’s fine.”

“I guess you’re right. However, if I see Elicia anywhere close the matches they’re going straight back onto the top shelf and into a locked box. I will not let her get hurt if I can help it.”

“Fine.”

Ed pauses, sips his coffee again because it’s just cool enough for it to only slightly scald his taste buds, which means that it’s almost perfect. “Now, c’mon, let’s make breakfast or something. I’m hungry and I can’t stay here for ages. I need to get to the library at some point, plus I need to do a small effort in cleaning my dorm since Al’ll be back today.”

Roy leads the way into the kitchen but turns around so that he can look at Ed and talk at the same time without seeming impolite. On the counter, there’s a second mug of coffee, which explains why Roy had only been carrying one.

“We should still have eggs,” Roy says, thoughtful. “Probably bacon too if we’re lucky. It’s been such a long week that I simply haven’t had the time to get groceries apart from what I could carry in my arms or jacket pocket back and forth from work.”

Roy’s still walking backwards and Ed bursts out laughing when the small of Roy’s back makes contact with the edge of the kitchen island. He watches Roy jump and whirl around to face the enemy daring to attack him at such an early time in the morning.

The look Roy sends him is one of unadulterated offence, and Ed’s grin widens. “The great Flame Alchemist bested by a kitchen counter.”

Roy _pouts_ , and it does something to Ed’s insides. Exactly what, he’s not sure. It’s probably just the coffee reaching his gut.

“It was a dirty trick placed by the enemy, Edward,” Roy says dramatically. “Can’t you see that this is the highest level of conspiracy? Planning to take out an officer of the Amestrian military by the most underrated weapon known to mankind: kitchen counters.”

Ed manages to stop laughing for just long enough to place his mug next to Roy’s on the counter by the stove. A second of silence, and then the room is filled with laughter again.

“You’re such a fucking dork, you bastard. Don’t go being all dramatic like that on me! It’s too fucking early in the morning.”

Ed manages to get control of his laughter (the fact that laughing makes his automail ache is a factor) and goes over to the fridge to inspect it in the hunt for the aforementioned egg and bacon Roy said was in there.

“Score!” He says triumphantly, holding up a carton of eggs. “Seems like you actually planned ahead for once, shithead.”

“How polite of you,” Roy says blandly. “Calling your superior officer a shithead while he’s trying to feed you breakfast after letting you crash at his place for the night. Truly an exemplary display of manners, Edward.”

“Sorry,” Ed says, but there’s zero effort behind it. Roy knows it. “D’you want me to reheat your coffee? It must’ve gone cold by now.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. “As long as you don’t pour it into a pan and literally heat it up or break the mug, feel free.”

Ed sends him a deadpan expression, claps and touches the mug, willing the molecules in coffee to move faster and thus, heat up. A second later, steam is rising from the coffee cup and Ed does the same to his before picking it up with his automail hand and chugs a good half of the mug in one go.

“I wouldn’t recommend touching it,” Ed warns as Roy’s hand reaches out for the handle. “It’ll burn you. Unless you’ve got an automail hand or you’re somehow immune to heat you _will_ get a second-degree burn. Trust me, I did that to Winry’s tea once and her hand was fucked for like, _weeks_. So don’t.”

Yet again, Roy raises that eyebrow of his but doesn’t say anything immediately. When he does, it’s simply to ask Ed to locate two plates for their food.

Ed complies and a minute or two later, they’re sitting across each other by the small kitchen table in Roy’s kitchen, where they have a view out to the street. _It must be nice_ , Ed thinks briefly, _having a place like this to call home._

The only real home he knows is his suitcase and wherever Al is with him.

Of course, Resembool is his _home_ town, but Ed doesn’t think he can ever go back to watching the days pass on a wheat or equine farm. Not after the hectic part-city, part-travelling life he’s been living since he was twelve.

If he had to specify one city as his home, Ed’s pretty sure that he would have chosen Central. He likes his and Al’s dorm room, even though the lamp in the bathroom does what it wants and there’s no decorative curtains in front of the two windows overlooking the Resources department.

They’ve been talking about getting a real apartment, after all this corruption and homunculus bullshit is done and over with. One with enough place for a small library so that they can actually own their own books and do their own stuff without constantly feeling like they’re being watched.

“I briefly looked through your report earlier, Edward. You wrote surprisingly much for decoding what, a baker’s dozen of circles. Was there anything particular about them that caught your eye?”

Ed shakes his head at Roy’s question. “Sure, the alchemy was really fascinating, and some of it, if refined in a lab, could have potential to do some really good stuff. Then again, like I’m sure I stated, it’s not my ideal territory and if you want even more in-depth information on the actual theory and ideas for development with these arrays, you’ll have to ask another alchemist that’s dedicated their life to something at least similar. It reminds me a bit of that alchemist they just transferred to Investigations— Roberts —that sounds like her territory.”

After he’s done speaking, Ed takes another big bite of his food. It isn’t great and could probably use more seasoning, but that’s also something that Roy keeps on the shelves where he can’t reach (yet, he’s getting there).

Maybe next time he sees Winry he’ll ask her about an expandable sole on his automail leg to expand whenever he needed to reach something higher to avoid the need of something to stand on.

He imagines it for a second and laughs; it’ll be like an off-centre pogo stick with no bounce, and just from the two seconds where he visualises it, he immediately scraps the plans.

He’s not willing to sacrifice his dignity for an added four-or-so inches of height.

“Thinking about anything funny?” Roy asks, and he does sound genuinely interested.

Ed hums. “Something about automail. If I even suggest it to Winry though, she’ll probably kill me for ‘ _making a joke of her precious amazing automail_ ’. I’d prefer to live through this helltime.”

Roy’s face tightens and _oh shit_. First a nightmare that woke him up, and now he fucks up like this? Damn. Shit. How to fix.

“Sorry,” he says, and this time he actually means it. “Before you go into work, how about we poke in through that coffee shop that sells _fucking expensive_ coffee and you get some from there instead of that shitty excuse at Central Command?”

Roy eyes him, but only nods and makes to clean away their plates. Ed slips away then, goes upstairs and gets dressed. He doesn’t keep any of his stuff at Roy’s place. Not when he might have to run any second if any part of this plan goes wrong.

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later, Roy’s back in his uniform and Ed’s holding onto a small satchel where he always keeps his ‘emergency’ clothing and toiletries.

Roy locks the door behind them, and they start the trek through the rain towards Central Command.

The library, which is where Ed is going to do more research on homunculus and the Philosopher’s Stone, is on the way, so they might as well walk together. If anybody asks, they had accidentally met up and decided that walking in the same direction was cause enough to walk together.

Now that they’re out in the public, Ed puts on his best angry-rebellious-teen façade again and insults the bastard more, questions everything and gestures with all he has. Roy, for his part, is back to being a smarmy bastard that smirks and raising an eyebrow at everything Ed says.

It’s just a role.

 

* * *

 

Ed opens his eyes and for a moment, he’s smiling at the memory as the December morning light streams in through the window. For once, he hadn’t had a nightmare involving some horror scenario of dying by a falling Zeppelin or Al dying or _anything_. It had just been a pleasant memory of one of the mornings in his life before everything had truly gone to a new level of hell.

There’s almost-tears prickling the corners of his eyes with how much he misses the fucked up normalcy life in Amestris brought him. Ed turns over and looks to his bedside table, where a picture of him, Mustang and Black Hayate are sitting in Mustang’s garden.

They’re far enough apart that there’s nothing suggested between them, and Ed’s young in the picture, probably thirteen or fourteen.

He doesn’t have a fucking clue how Mustang had gotten it, but it’s probably taken by Maes before he died.

That thought is the first in a series of _bad, bad, bad_ and Ed gets up from the bed as soon and humanly possible and steps out of his bedroom. Straight across the hallway is the bathroom and he locks himself in there, grabs the sink with both hands and stares into the mirror.

The bags under his eyes look like Roy’s from the dream, and _oh god_ he’s spiralling back down the path of _what could I have done to get a different outcome_ and _you fucked up absolutely everything that was possible to fuck up how do you manage to mess up everything. You rob everyone of their happiness and they feel burdened by your demanding and awful presence._

He wills his brain to stop, tries to catch his breathing and reign it in enough to not make himself pass out from hyperventilating.

There are tears sliding down his cheeks again, and damn, Ed’s weaker than he thought, crying because of a _happy dream_. He’s supposed to be strong for Al, supposed to be as strong as Al was in the armour, where he couldn’t sleep or eat or even cry out his emotions.

He would do anything, _anything_ for one more Saturday morning, for one more stupid debate with Roy. _Anything_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo here y'all go
> 
> This thing is almost finished and I'm Here for it bc this thing has been so incredibly exhausting to write  
> And besides, my next project will be even gayer than this  
> Do not worry, this will have a sequel, at... some point ... I have it planned out ... but ... eh,,, not in a while. Y'all will have to suffer
> 
> I have... not really edited this too much, so if there's inconsistencies and shit, then I am very sorry. I'll look at it-- later, don't you worry

**_Munich, 24th of December, 1924_ **

Noah is up before either of the two brothers. She makes coffee for the sleeping boys and sits in the kitchen to read one of the books Gracia had offered her yesterday.

It’s peaceful here, on Christmas Eve. It brings calm over the city, over the plus-half-a-million people living here. Perhaps it’s because it’s early, but also because there’s something sacred about this day; something in the air tempting people to go out in the streets and to the churches for mass before reuniting with their families in front of the Christmas tree when the sun has long set on Germany.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ed stumbling out of his bedroom and across the hall into the bathroom, rubbing at his eyes with one hand, and opening the door with the other. He’s hurried and almost knocking his face straight into the door frame.

Edward’s been pining the last few days, that much Noah knows. Something’s been on his mind that keeps him lost, trapped in his own thoughts and memories.

She’s been planning to talk to him about it. Today seems like a good day, even though it’s Christmas Eve and technically a happy holiday, neither her or the Elric brothers celebrate. They had mentioned something about an alternative holiday being celebrated back home in their world, however.

“Morning.”

She looks up to see Alphonse, wearing a thick knitted jacket Gracia had gifted him the past Christmas over plain grey pyjamas.

“Good morning,” she greets and gestures to the coffee on the stove. “I made coffee for you two. Merry Christmas.”

Al merely raises an eyebrow but repeats, voice hoarse from sleep, “Merry Christmas.”

This other world, while being so similar to theirs, even with countries almost matching to one another, although with different placements and languages and even traditions, is fascinating to Noah. It might be because to anyone else it might sound like a fairy tale, to hear of this ever-so-slightly distorted mirror image of the place where you reside and live out your life, but to Noah, it’s different.

She’s lived her entire life, first with her _familia_ until she was sixteen and sent off to a group of performing Roma. They had taken her in as their own and helped her figure out and perfect her power.

Her ability to sing is mediocre at best, and for a while she danced with the group, learning the traditional dance of their group. But that was before they discovered that she could do fortune telling.

After they found out, she was the main star of their show, the one who brought in the most money. Not enough to keep them from selling her, apparently, since they had treated her like an object in every sense of the word and abandoned.

She’s still proud of her heritage, of her _familia_ , and while she’s lived in one place for well over two years now, her instincts are starting to tell her that it’s time to leave again, to find the ultimate place where she can live out her life in peace without fearing the German government.

There’s no place in Germany for that dream, no place in _Europe._ She’d begged Edward to bring her with him to Shamballa, or _Amestris,_ the first time, but she no longer wants to go. There aren’t any Roma in Amestris, and while she would be able to start her life fresh again, it would be too isolating to never have a person with her that would finally understand her heritage.

Maybe America will be the country of opportunities that she’s been looking for all along.

She turns to Alphonse while blocking the winter light streaming in through their kitchen window with one hand. The alternate holiday is something she hasn’t heard much about, and something she’d like to know more about.

“I think Edward mentioned something about a winter holiday in Amestris that is similar to what they celebrate here?”

Al digs around in the fridge for butter and cheese. His stance looks relaxed, but Noah can see the minute changes Alphonse displays when thinking back to his home. “Winter Fest, yeah. It’s this really big, amazing festival. Ed always enjoyed it more than me, but that was because he could actually eat the food, drink hot chocolate and the sorts. It starts on the 21st of December and ends on the 31st. Children have a long holiday from school around the same time though. Last time I was in school, we had from the 15th of December until like January 4th, which was pretty great.”

Al’s eyes turn wistful. “That year, mom took us to Central for the first time so that we could visit one of her friends who had just moved there.”

“How old were you then?” Noah asks, genuinely curious. “Your mom died when you were rather young, didn’t she?”

Her mind catches up a bit more, and the math _isn’t_ adding up. “How long _were_ you in school?”

Alphonse turns around, butter in one hand and a knife in the other and smiles kindly. “One year or so. Then me and Brother started teaching ourselves along with Winry because we had more freedom to study alchemy and automail engineering then— I bet you know, that’s what Brother’s limbs are made of— oh, hi Brother! Merry Christmas.”

There’s a noncommittal grunt from Ed. Noah watches Alphonse’s smile turn to a frown and worry lines appear by his eyes. “Brother, are you okay?”

“Fine,” Ed says, but the tone is shaky and his shoulders are heaving ever so slightly with the struggle to breathe. His eyes are rimmed red and there are tear tracks on his face. Had he been crying in the bathroom after Noah had seen him earlier? “Just a dream.”

Noah gets up and offers her chair, which is the closest to Ed. He slumps down into it and sighs deeply.

Al looks to her, eyebrows furrowed in worry as he places a mug of coffee and a plate of food in front of Edward.

“You know you can talk to us about everything, Brother. Me especially. It’s not an issue; neither of us minds listening to you,” Al says kindly as he drags a chair out from the table to face Ed.

Edward looks up then, and the pure misery on his face is evident. It’s rare that the emotions Ed feels are displayed so openly, and it puts Noah off ever so slightly.

“Nah, Al,” he says, attempting to grin. It’s so fake Noah wants to wipe it right off his face. “Thanks, though.”

Al hums and sits down next to his brother, talking quietly in Amestrian. Noah doesn’t mind them when they start talking like that. Languages are precious and should be respected. Besides, it’s not like they’re intending to keep her out of the loop.

She has nobody know to speak Romani with; her people have left her _twice_ , and while it might be possible to find another _familia_ willing to take her in that she can feel safe with, she’s not sure that she will ever fully regain trust in her people.

Not after almost being sold.

“I’ll be in my room,” Ed says and there’s the sound of a chair scraping against the wooden flooring and a plate coming into contact with the steel of the sink. “If you need anything, Al, you can come on right in. You have to study, ‘n’ so do I.”

 

 

He’s supposed to be studying; supposed to be continuing his work on the self-destructing array, but he _can’t_. The picture of him and Roy has moved from the bedside table to being propped up against his lamp.

Ed looks at it too much— he drinks in Roy’s features like he’s addicted; in the middle of the desert without access to water. The shaggy black hair resting over his forehead, long enough to be easily tousled but not enough to cover those fascinating eyes. Deep and dark, like a pond at the foot of a mountain. A deep dark blue Ed almost wants to _swim_ in, dive down to see how deep it goes.

He loves him.

This morning, after the dream, Ed had fully, _really_ realised it. That he’s in love. And that maybe, just maybe, Roy had at least _liked_ him too.

When he says it like that, it sounds like something a kindergartner would say. _Mommy, I have a new boyfriend! His name is Kevin and I looooveee him_.

Ed doesn’t have a single idea of how romance is supposed to work between normal people, much less two people as broken as the two of them.

Besides, Roy’s likely of the opinion and conviction that Ed probably won’t ever come back, and thus, he will have moved on; earned promotion after promotion until eventually snatching the title of Führer for himself.

Being the leader of Amestris would suit Roy. He has ideals strong enough to withstand the greatest hit. He’s not one to be corrupted by the prospect of money or power.

“Edward?”

Ed looks up. It’s Noah, standing in the doorway, looking hesitant to step inside. Probably a polite thing, Ed realises. He gestures for her to come inside. “Yeah?”

She closes the door behind her and walks over to the desk where he’s sitting. She’s looking at the picture. Ed knows she is. He doesn’t blame her: had he seen a picture with Noah and someone else and they had been looking happy together, he would have looked too. Guessed their relationship from small clues hidden in the black-and-white faces.

“I’ve seen that man before,” Noah says. “He’s your chemistry professor, but the one on the other side, the one from your home.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “He was my superior officer when I was in the military. I would love to say that I don’t miss his stupid face, but—”

“But you do,” she finishes. “I know. I saw it in the visions. You. And him. Spending time together.”

Ed doesn’t look at her or at the picture. He’s not what hurts more right now: the sharp, clear memories or the face of a person who’s seen them together.

 “What is he like?” She tries carefully. “Do you want to talk about him? I know there was something more than work relations between you.”

For a moment, Ed wants to curl in on himself, wants to shut himself off from not only Al, but also Noah. But he needs to talk about this, he realises. Noah doesn’t know what Roy’s like, not really, and maybe she can be unbiased and just _listen_.

“Which part did you see?”

It’s such a basic and obvious question she must know what he’s talking about.

“A meeting. It was you, and him and some people I don’t know. You were talking, but he was cleaning a cut on your cheek while a blonde woman was tending to your hand.”

Ed smiles softly at the memory and internally winces when he remembers the fractured ankle and bruises covering his arm and chest. “We were planning a revolution, but I was always out late working, and then usually fighting, so I had to be patched up more or less every week. The lady is Lieutenant Hawkeye, Mustang’s adjunct. She was one of the biggest reasons why we won the fight. Without her, we’d be dead long before the end.”

She sits down on his bed and Ed turns his chair to face her.

“I really miss those meetings,” Ed says, not a trace of shame in his voice. “I miss him tending to my wounds, even though the fucking wounds sucked. I miss making food together with the rest of the team and eating while planning what seemed to be the end of the world. I miss the language learning.”

That seems to catch her attention more, and she doesn’t interrupt. Maybe it is so that he can just spill and spill and she’ll listen. Has she realised that this is what he needs? A way to let out all the thoughts in his head so that it won’t overflow and drown him with their intensity.

“We needed a secret language, so under the guise of an assignment, he started learning me a new language. It’s called Xingese and uses a completely different set of characters than what Amestris and Germany use. If I’m not wrong, it’s similar to what they speak in China or perhaps Japan, at least from what I’ve seen of their language. Not sayin’ that it’s exactly the same though, so don’t quote me on that.”

He feels like something inside of him just loosens up and all the memories come flooding in.

“At first I’d just spend a lot of time in his office annoying the fuck out of him while messing up the pronunciation as much as possible just to see his face do that _thing_ where it just freezes for a second before turning into this one expression of his that just oozes ‘ _oh god can I just set the office on fire_ ’, which he _could_ probably, since that was the kind of alchemy he specialised in. Very fascinating, but really dangerous. Then, he started teaching me more after the meetings, in the margins my assignment detail documents and the sort. It didn’t really bring us closer at first, but it did bring this sense of respect and trust; that he was teaching me a language that was precious to him, even if it was in the beginning only to aid us in our fight against our fucked up government.”

His eyes flicker to the calendar and he sighs. “It’s his birthday today. I doubt he celebrated. He stopped after Hughes died. That was his best friend. The doppelgänger to officer Hughes here.”

She’s still not talking, so Ed takes it as his permission to continue speaking. “After like six months of me spending the Friday nights at his place I just started sleeping in the guest room so that I wouldn’t have to go back home to my dorm at two in the morning. It became a routine, for me to wake up early and light the fireplace in the winter, wait for him to wake up and then we’d eat breakfast and discuss whatever topic came to mind, usually in Xingese to challenge my knowledge.”

“You were close,” she says. “Really close. Was there ever anyone who questioned it?”

Ed thinks for a moment, but the answer is clear in his head. “I don’t think so. See, we were only really ‘friendly’ when no one else could see us. We always had to keep up this public façade of ‘angry teenager’ and ‘smarmy bastard superior’ to avoid the senior corrupted staff from coming onto us. But there were probably some dicks in the brass that thought he only kept me for—” he gestures, hoping that she’ll get the message. Judging by her expression, she does. “—but we never really heard anything sounding like that, so I can’t tell you for certain.”

He offers a sad smile. “You see, there wasn’t ever really anything _actual_ between us. Like I’ve said a thousand times, I was his subordinate and he was really intent on preserving his image as a womaniser and I— I mean, _honestly_ , who would want to deal with me all the time? I’m fourteen years younger than him, Noah, and if not I’ve just mentioned isn’t an issue, then gender is; his political position or _anything_. Besides, I doubt he would still be into me even a fraction of what it seemed like he was before I vanished the first time. For all I know, he’s moved on by now, expecting to never see me again. Fuck if I know, he might have made Führer by now and is married with a kid and a second one on the way.”

Noah’s face contracts into one of determined controlled anger, and jeez if _that_ ain’t scary, as passive as she usually is. “I saw how he looked at you, Edward, and I doubt that what I saw was anything that was a fleeting attraction of sorts. I think that when you get back, that if you give it a chance it might just make you happy. I think he could make you happy, and that he could make you happy too. You can’t continue to sacrifice yourself for everyone, Edward, because it will be the end of you. You’ve done so much, and yet you take no credit for any of it.”

She’s been talking to Alphonse, heard him describe everything Ed’s ever done in detail and how he always puts others before himself.

All he’s ever done and achieved only goes to paying down the price of his sins, even though nothing can ever equal the amount of stacked on top of them. At this rate, maybe he’ll make a small dent in his mountain of mistakes before he dies.

“If you get the chance, will you try? Alphonse wants you to be happy and I’m sure every person who has ever met you will wish you the same.”

Ed laughs out loud and it feels freeing in an odd way. “I’ve collected a lot of enemies over the years, both within the military and outside of it. I doubt any of them would want me happy.”

“But you’ve met good people too, done good things too.”

Her face is more determined than Ed’s seen since the day they got spit back out of the Gate, when they had explained that they needed to find a way to get back home again. “Promise me that if you get the chance to be happy, grab it with both hands and hold on for dear life.”

Ed looks to the picture, to Roy’s smile, to himself holding Black Hayate in his arms. “Yeah. I’ll try.”

He will. Even if there’s the thinnest string of cobweb that will help him reach his destination, he will take it and follow its lead.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Paris, 13th - 19th of April, 1925_ **

 “Being on a train reminds me of when we travelled around all over Amestris,” Al says as they watch the countryside pass by as they leave Germany, moving onto French soil.

It’s a week-long trip, intended for Al to get more hands-on experience of the French language, and under the guise of a language trip, it’s a hunt for any knowledge they can utilise to get back home.

Ed sighs. “Yeah. I wish we were doing that now. A routine inspection in the East. Being able to stop in Resembool to visit Granny and Winry before hopping on the morning train to do the work and go back again to Central.”

He grins. “But hey, we’re closer than ever. Just a few more months and we’ll be ready to go home. _See Winry again_ , huh, Al?”

Al blushes and Ed cackles. But Al’s a little shit and stares him right into the eyes. “How about Mustang, Brother? Surely you’re not looking forward to that, though.”

“Stop it, you. Stop terrorising your older brother,” Ed mutters against his hand, fighting the redness creeping onto his own face. “Study some vocab or look at the flower fields outside the window.”

“Alright, Brother. If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t.”

The thing is, Ed _wants_ to talk about this, but he’s not sure how. Not sure how to continue the conversation, that is, not being unsure of how to speak. Besides, they’re in public, and he’s still very confused.

He knows he loves Roy, he really _does_ , but all the uncertainty clouding his brain is making it hard to think about any realistic outcome for his attraction.

And though Al had made it clear that he had no trouble with it, Ed can’t help but wonder if his little brother is lying to him to be polite. It’s not like Al, but Al knows the worst of Roy; knows what he’s done; knows how he’s messed up their family-in-everything-but-blood by following orders.

“Do you blame him?”

The words slip out of his mouth and right after, there’s a swearword on his tongue, ready to be released.

Al blinks. “Blame who? Mustang?”

“Yeah,” Ed says after a second or two. He’s not looking at Al, because he can’t stand to look at him, not when talking about _this_. “He killed Winry’s parents. You know that. On orders,  while he was in Ishval. Do you blame him?”

“I—” Al sounds conflicted, but it’s not enough to make Ed look away from the splatters of sunflowers passing by through the window. There were always a lot of sunflowers in the fields outside Central. “I’m not sure. I think that killing them was wrong. I think that it was wrong of him to follow the orders. But when you think about what would happen if he didn’t, it sort of makes sense why he did it.”

Ed’s not sure if Al knows the entire story. Maybe he should ask; reveal that bit of information that might fully redeem Roy in Al’s eyes because Ed _knows_ that Al blames Roy for so much.

He knows that Al blames Roy for all their hardships in the military, for Ed being almost more in the hospital than out of it. That he’s the reason why Ed vanished the first time because Roy was the one making decisions and rebelling.

He could redeem Roy, but that would involve revealing some of the man’s deepest, worst secrets.

“Right after he did it,” Ed says slowly. His tongue feels like someone’s tipped a vial of some sedative on it, perhaps ketamine or laudanum or _something_ and the rest of the effects haven’t caught up yet. “The night he did it. After they removed the bodies. He … he tried killing himself.”

Al chokes on his breath and that is enough to kickstart Ed’s body into looking at him because the sound means _danger_ and that is _not_ something his brother should be put in at any cost. Alphonse looks horrified. Perhaps casually stating facts about a suicide attempt isn’t common conversation etiquette.

“He tried to kill himself?” Al repeats. “But he didn’t succeed.” A pause and Al frowns. “Of course he didn’t, he’s alive now, stupid me.” _But what if he isn’t_ , Ed’s brain supplies and _oh god_. “But you’re telling me, that _General_ Roy Mustang who terrorised us for years and yelled at you for being upset after Nina died and after so many tragedies happened, tried to _kill_ himself?”

Ed only nods, because what else is he supposed to do? “Marcoh stopped him. I … he really does feel bad for what he did, you know. He didn’t want to.” His palm stings and when Ed looks down at his palm, there’s red crescent moons adorning the skin. “I don’t any human truly _wants_ to kill. Well apart from Kimblee or like, _Archer_ , but neither of them were right in the head.”

He stops, reconsiders. “I’m not saying that Roy’s innocent or that all the dislike you have for him is unjustified or anything like that. He’s human, and it broke him.”

He lets out a breath. “You know, those nights when I stayed over after the meetings, he … he still dreams about it every night, still wakes up more often than not reaching out for a gun that’s not there. It’ll haunt him for the rest of his life.”

“It must have been horrifying,” Al whispers, before his voice gains strength again, accompanied by a determined look. “I will never forgive the person that murdered the Rockbells, but I would be willing to forgive Roy Mustang. They’re not the same person. They … they don’t have to be the same person.”

There’s one more thing that makes this more horrifying, that Ed probably shouldn’t tell Al because it’s such a horrific topic that will terrorise both of them until the day they’re six feet under.

He wets his lips, swallows, tries to figure out how to break the news to Al, but Al has to _know_ already— if he remembers their first meeting with Roy and Hawkeye, because the _look_ Roy had had that day was one of realisation, acknowledgement and understanding of what they had done. “He tried human transmutation. He had completely given up on life. That’s why he knew what we had done right the first time he saw the basement. He _knew_.”

 

 

The hotel they’re staying at is okay enough. It’s two single beds, one on each end of the room, and there’s a small desk as well as a bathroom. Right next door there’s a bakery. It’s okay. It’s enough.

It reminds Ed of one of the many cheaper hotels they’ve stayed at all across of Amestris. Maybe there’s an interdimensional protocol on how to furnish cheap hotel rooms.

Seeing his brother laying on the stiff hotel mattress makes Ed feel a unique kind of giddy. It’s his _brother_ , in the flesh, laying on a bed in a way he’s never been able to before while on their travels around.

He’s been together with his for over a year and a half at this point, has known he was back to a human body for double the time, but yet it still doesn’t strike him as real. Every time he wakes up, he’s refilled with the same strange mix of happiness and renewed hope as the first time he saw Al in his new body.

“Do you think we’ll see any doppelgängers here, Brother?”

Ed falls down on his bed and grins when the slight bounce of mattress sends him upwards again. He looks to Al, who’s laying with his arms splayed out, laying on the bed down to the knees and in the process of toeing off his shoes.

“Maybe,” he says. “Probably. I’d be willing to bet like, someone from the military or something. Maybe Psiren. First to spot a doppelgänger wins?”

“Wins what?” Al retorts.

“Fame and honour,” Ed says instantly and it makes Al burst out laughing. The one year they had been in school, that had been what the teacher had always set as the reward for whoever did the best at quizzes rather than a piece of candy.

“It’s on. I bet I’ll spot one first, though,” Al says. “I’m the better observer of us.”

“Fuck no, you’re underestimating me. How dare you, Al, I thought you looked up to me,” Ed says, resting his hand over his heart. “I’m mortally wounded, Alphonse. How could you _do_ such a thing to your brot— _oofmf_.”

There’s a pillow smothering him, and Ed internally compliments Al’s accuracy in pillow slinging from a horizontal position. He pushes it away and gets up to gently whack Al with it. “I told you to stop terrorising your brother, Al. Listen to instructions, will you?”

“I’m a legal adult, and I don’t have to listen to you, especially when your so-called instructions are dumb and without reason,” Al points out and god this kid-adult-something-mix is observant and smart and fucking _sassy_.

“Yeah yeah,” Ed says and sits down on the floor next to Al’s bed. “We should go check out the next-door bakery tomorrow. Maybe get our breakfast from there.”

Al’s hand reaches out to touch Ed’s shoulder and stops. “Your shoulder is tense,  Brother. Do you want me to try to help it relax a bit? You’re in pain, aren’t you?”

Ed takes a second to just _feel_ , and yes, he is in a fair amount of pain, which _sucks_. “Do your worst.”

 

 

The morning after, they’re out of the hotel early and looking around for the bakery the receptionist had mentioned when they had checked in the day before. Ed glances through the window of the establishment and freezes, because … _because_.

“I think you might have to give over your win to me, Al,” he whispers, unable to form a solid voice from the multitude of emotions going through him faster than he can name them. “I think, _shit_ , is that … is that _mom_?”

Al whirls around to look in the same direction as Ed and he too freezes. They’re standing outside the bakery window and staring at an older version of their mom, looking nothing like the homunculus Sloth had, but like their mom. Their _mom_.

The human brain, and heart for that matter, are used to dealing with shock and surprise, but this— his head might as well explode. There’s something so disconcerting about seeing their mom like this, in the flesh, dynamic and moving.

She’s nothing like Sloth in the slightest. Naturally, since Sloth had been based _on_ their mom, there are similarities in the features, but Sloth had looked _evil_ , so filled with hatred she’s been nothing like Trisha. Her doppelgänger looks so _kind._ It’s definitely the closest to their mom that can be created.

_God_ , Ed wants to run inside and up to her and throw his arms around her and just hold her close. But this Trisha likely doesn’t have the last name Elric, and probably isn’t married to a man named Hohenheim. She doesn’t know them. This isn’t their mom, only her doppelgänger, and no matter how much Ed wants to take her back to be a part of their life, it wouldn’t be fair. It would break with the flow of the world.

Human transmutation is one thing. Stealing people and transporting them between dimensions could very well drive a person to suicide.

And Ed can’t be responsible for another life being lost.

The memory of turning Sloth’s water form into ethanol and watching her slowly vanish into the air flashes before his eyes when he blinks.

“Do you think we should still get food from there?” Al says, voice weak. “We don’t have to. We could walk away and find another bakery. Pretend that we never saw her.”

“Would we be able to leave this world if we got to know her?” Ed finishes for him. He’s so conflicted. On one side, he wants to turn on his heel and march in the other direction, because his brain, his _nightmares_ don’t need more fuel to create hell for him, but on the other side … that’s the doppelgänger of their mother, and they should be old enough to realise that they’re not the same.

“The receptionist did say that they made good food,” Al says uncertainly. Ed looks to him, deadpan expression in place.

“Are you telling me that you’re finding excuses to confront the doppelgänger of mom and that those excuses are _food_? You’re starting to sound like Breda.”

“It’s the best excuse I could think of! You want to see her too, I know you do.” Al steels himself. “Let’s do it.”

Ed’s the one to push up the door and they make a beeline for the counter. It’s just after nine on a Tuesday morning, and it’s more or less empty. It _is_ really their mother’s duplicate, from the small dimple in her left cheek to the way her hair rests that one particular way over her shoulder that speaks _Trisha_.

Ed should know because when he has his hair loose or in a low-resting ponytail, it rests the exact same way.

Al’s the one who speaks the best French, so Ed tells him to order for the two of them. He stands behind Al and sighs, because _god_ , it’s nice to see her again so that he can correct his mental picture of her.

It seems like whenever his mom had appeared in his thoughts ever since he first landed in Germany, they had been tainted with the appearance of Sloth, the homunculi being the physical product of their sins.

“Hey, Ed,” Al waves a hand in front of his face. “Come on, let’s find a table.”

Ed nods and grabs his coffee from Al’s hand because coffee is about as damn near a miracle as it gets. There’s a nice window table a few metres from the counter and he sits there. They’re not close to one of the main streets of the city they’re in, but there’s a steady trickle of people walking past the window.

It only takes a few minutes for their breakfasts to be ready and Trisha; not-mom, comes over to them, smiles her beautiful smile that Al inherited from their mom and tells them that she hopes they enjoy the food.

They spend the time eating in silence, not finding much to say. A few more people enter the café, buys their food and leaves or sits down somewhere inside the establishment. Others leave, and some get joined by Trisha for a while.

It’s clear that their mom is a person people here adore and talk to. Good. People _should_ talk to her.

Perhaps she’s genuinely happy here. Maybe she’s content.

Good. That’s … that’s good. That’s what their mom should have been too.

Content, taking the vegetables she grew to markets in the bigger neighbouring town.

Maybe even all the way to East City.

His thoughts are interrupted by the shadow of Trisha appearing over their table.

“Do you mind if I sit here for a bit? I try to talk to all of my customers so that it doesn’t seem like there’s a distanced relationship of any kind. I find that it makes the food better when I know who I’m making it for.”

Ed looks up to see Al nod and gesture for her to drag over a chair from the closest table. She does and smiles at them. “I haven’t seen you two around here before. Are you from out of town?”

Al smiles brightly, because he’s polite and good with people, unlike Ed. “We’re exchange students from a place far away, but we’re currently studying in Germany.”

A place far away, huh? Yeah, a dimension or two is pretty damn far away by Ed’s count.

“We were recommended to come here on a visit,” Ed says, cursing his sucky French. He’d only learnt so much from Al and from some of the French-speaking students in his classes. “One of our professors recommended it, and we managed to pool together enough money to stay here a week. We’d hope to get to check out the library here sometime this week.”

He laughs, and it’s awkward, but _hey_ , human interaction. “Of course, we’ll have to find it first.”

He takes another bite of his food and lets Al take over the conversation. It’s very similar to how any conduct would go. _How’s studying, what are you studying, do you enjoy it_ , all of those social norms that become terribly dry once you’ve repeated your major about fifty times and yet heard none from other people.

Maybe he should start interacting with more people outside of classes.

Sitting here, at a small café in a small city in France puts some things into perspective as he hears Al and not-mom talking. How some things can be so similar and yet so different. How this person can be genetically identical to the version they had had at home in their house on the hill before the plague hit and wiped out her life like a candle in the wind.

 

 

 “She really did seem happy here,” Al says as they leave and turn back to wave to not-mom. “I think mom would like to run a bakery too, if we hadn’t lived in the middle of vegetable fields.”

“Her story was so similar to ours,” Ed begins before he stops because he doesn’t know how to continue. “It’s like our life and our fate got transferred to this person after mom died. Since we’re away from our home studying, and both of her sons are away studying in a different part of France.”

He remembers what Trisha had said about them. _Both brilliant boys. One of them studies physics and the other, chemistry. One day they’ll do something great that France will be remembered for: something that will change the world for the better._

He seriously hopes it’s nothing like the Uranium bomb.

But if her boys are his and Al’s unofficial doppelgängers (because this entire doppelgänger shit is _complicated_ ), then that must they at least have some of their base moral instincts. Right?

_Right_?

 

 

They do end up finding the city library afterwards, and most of their week is spent there, between the bookshelves scanning or any material that can help them get back to Amestris.

There’s not much, which doesn’t surprise Ed, not really. It’s not like this world has super-developed sciences of any kind that would support interdimensional travelling of any kind, so they have to make do with what they can find.

On day four, Al moves from the more science-based sections to the one talking about religion and spirituality. (“You never know what you might find there. Some of it may make connections and reveal information for us. Besides, with you reading science stuff there’s no harm in me reading from this section.”)

On their way back, they stop off in one part of the French region Alsace, right by the border of Germany. It’s only for one night so that they can save their poor backs from a night spent sleeping on the train.

If there’s something Ed has done enough of in his youth, it’s sleeping on trains.

There’s a small inn in the village, and they both have the shocks of their life when faced with the language the older couple running the inn speaks.

It’s German, but _not_ , because it’s so heavily laced through with a French accent that it takes more than a few minutes for their brains to adapt to this unknown combination of two languages.

When they’re finally back on German soil, it doesn’t necessarily bring a sense of security, but it does bring a feeling of familiarity. They know this country well by now, better than France.

And soon they’ll be hopefully leaving this place forever.

 

 

Noah asks them what they’ve found, and they have to admit that it’s not much. However, they tell her about their mom instead, about the duplicate and how seeing her again hurt but also felt reassuring.

That night after first seeing her, Ed hadn’t had any nightmares. He’s not sure if-if there’s a reason connecting the two events.

Perhaps. Maybe not.

He’s not going to get too deep into that.

Not now.

****

* * *

 

****

**_Munich, 24th of June, 1925_ **

Their kitchen table has long succumbed to stacks and stacks of papers. Some are placed on a chair in a designed ‘not important pile’. Everything but the most vital will be burnt before they leave. They can’t have a single trace remain.

The Thule Society can’t ever have access to their notes. It would mean a second attempt at conquering this world and destroying Amestris.

Ed’s willing to do anything to avoid that happening again. If it means that Amestris would never be faced with a threat like that ever again, he would gladly die right this moment for it.

All the notes they deem important will be sorted off into a pile resting on the kitchen counter. All of it will be rewritten to be in German and condensed because a lot of the notes contain trains of thoughts eventually leading to nowhere.

And if they lead to nowhere, it’s likely not relevant to bring back home.

And— German, because, when they make it back, most of this is still really important and really very dangerous material.

Edward doesn’t want radical alchemists digging into their notes, theories and ideas about the Gate.

In fact, that might be more dangerous than letting the Thule Society have them.

They can only bring the most essential documents with them back.

Noah hasn’t seen the full extent of their notes, and Ed’s sure that it must look like their apartment, and in particular their kitchen, has turned into a mad scientist’s office.

It’s likely what it is at this point.

Slowly, they work through the seemingly never-ending piles, reading through the notes for anything that might prove useful. There’s sorting going on, moving notes from one pile, over to a second and then back to the first one, double checking to make sure that nothing is missed.

Then, when all of it is done, the unimportant notes are slowly being fed into their wood oven to eliminate the evidence (an ashtray simply cannot keep up with this amount of paper, and besides, the number of matches…) and the rest are being condensed in small, scribbled shorthand until it’s barely readable and then kept in stacks of papers held together by bull clips.

It takes them a week to get through everything, but in the end, instead of having stacks threatening to collapse, they have managed to condense it all onto fifty-odd sheets, which shows how much they value what they’ve learnt here.

Neither of them ever wants to forget Germany, because this place, while having it’s ugly qualities, has proved to be a comfortable existence for them for the time being.

But it’s not home.

Only Amestris can ever be their one, true home.

Home is where you feel at ease, where you can turn in any direction and see a friend or a family member.

And while they don’t have an impressive family tree, honestly quite the contrary, while they are the last two of the Elric family tree still alive, they have friends all over the country ready to lend a helping hand if the need should arise.

That’s enough.

And as with their friends here— _well_ , some things have to be sacrificed to make something good better.

Their last day of university is _technically_ in August, but they’ve contacted admin and explained that they’re moving back home due to a family event. It’s sad, when they walk back to their apartment, knowing that this will be the last time ever that they see the university they’ve studied at for so long.

They don’t say goodbye to their professors, because that would make it seem real. Besides, Ed can’t force himself to see Roy’s doppelgänger because it keeps clouding his mental image of the real deal.

“I’ll miss being here,” Al says, thoughtfully. “I think I’d like to apply to university when we’re back in Amestris. There’s so much to learn, but I don’t think I’d like to do a language degree like I did here. I’d stick with something to do with alchemy. A field I haven’t dealt in before— botany, maybe.”

Ed looks to him. “As long as you don’t turn out like that dickwad Tringham, then by all means, be my guest.”

There’s only so much of this entire thing that can be planned in Germany. So many unknown variables. Will Ed still technically be a part of the military after all this time? Will they have taken his savings account back since there are no living people in his family that they could give it to?

They have no idea what has changed while they were gone and the mere thought of it is scary. For all they know, they could land right back into a civil war. Führer Hakuro is a dick, and if that’s not enough already, he’s _useless_ too. He’s not the one who should be ruling the country.

“What will we do when we get back?” Ed says. “There’s nowhere for us to stay. We don’t know any of the variables of what will happen after we pass through the Gate. Hell, we don’t even know where we’ll end up. For all we know, we could end up in like … Drachma and not know any better.”

“I think you’d know, Brother,” Al says, dry as the desert to the East. “Considering that Drachma is all ice and snow, I think you _would_ notice that, even as oblivious as you are.”

Ed stares at him, nonplussed. Then his brain catches up and he groans, one impulse away from slamming his head onto the table. “Oh my god, _Al, stop_.”

“Stop what, Brother?” Al says, the very picture of innocence. “I didn’t do anything. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Ed glares at him. “Oh shut it you.” He stands up from the chair and stretches, before frowning. “I think one of the first things on our list is to go to Winry and have her look at my arm.”

He bends down and pulls off his shoes and socks. There’s something he hasn’t told Al, something he’s tried to keep silent about. He stands straight and points to the automail leg, which is hanging a couple of centimetres over the floor. “My leg’s fucked up too.”

Al moves to sit in front of his legs and takes Ed’s automail leg in his hands, inspecting it. “How long has this been going on? You don’t grow an inch overnight, Ed.”

Ed grimaces. “It’s been getting steadily worse the last half year or so but I didn’t think it was important enough to mention.” The grimace turns into a frown. “I’m _not_ dealing with the embarrassment of a cane. I can handle a little discomfort.”

Al just stares at him. “ _Brother_ , you know this is serious! You know what Winry’s told you about this! If you walk like this for too long, you could seriously damage your hips and cause even more unnecessary pains.” He pauses. “We need to set a date to go home _now_ so that this can be fixed.”

“Noah?” Al calls, and Ed sighs because oh god now Al’s gonna make his legs a big deal and ain’t _that_ beautiful. “Do you have a measuring tape? Ed’s legs are messed up and I need to measure them so that we can discuss it with his mechanic once we’re home.”

Noah steps into the kitchen and throws a measuring tape in Ed’s direction. He barely catches it, but the turning of his body and the angle makes him topple over, right on top of Al, who lets out a choked groan.

Ed rolls away as quickly as he can and looks at Al, who apart from the giant bruise he’s gonna have on his shoulder come morning, looks fine. It’s always good to double check, however. “Hey, you doing fine?”

Al pats a couple of places (does that even help in finding injuries?) and shakes his head. “I should be all fine. Now, while I have you sitting, you might as well lay down with your hips aligned straight. I’ll measure the discrepancy.”

It’s five and three-quarters centimetres, to which Al promptly tells Ed, “You should have told me. Do you have a single clue of how much strain you’ve been putting on your hip?”

Ed shrugs and sits up to reach for his shoes and socks. “Yeah, yeah. It’s not like we have a cane around here for me to use, so it wouldn’t’ve made a difference anyway.”

“We could have gotten one, Brother,” Al says before standing up. Ed watches Al stride over to the hallway mirror to check for any bruises on his face. When Al turns back again, there’s something distinctly terrible in his expression. It’s not disdain— it’s disappointment.

Al’s disappointed in him? _Shit_.

“I’m sorry,” Ed says, and he means it. He hopes Al understands that. “There’s been so much going on with everything. With talking to the university, to going to France, planning our trip to England, _everything_. It’s— it’s not exactly uncommon for me to deal with broken or damaged automail over time, and I’ve just adapted to it. Like, I didn’t do this because I wanted to hide it from you, but like, rather, there’s not _much_ we could’ve done to make it better, so I didn’t really bother or remember it for long enough to bring up the topic.”

Al nods and seems to finally get that Ed’s not actually being a self-sacrificing idiot like he’s been in the past. _As much_ of a self-sacrificing idiot, perhaps. “All right then, Brother. I’m sorry for getting mad and doing that pseudo-angry-panicky-upset thing.”

 

 

Later that day, they invite Gracia to visit because they need to sit down with her. They trust her, and she’ll likely be just as understanding as the version of her that they have back at home.

She sits in their living room, in Ed’s armchair and looks between. “Is something the matter?”

Ed looks to Al and together they look at Noah.

“It’s complicated,” Al says slowly and Ed nods, because god, that’s the mildest way to describe the current circumstances. “We have to leave.”

“Leave?” she says, confused. “Go back home?”

Ed huffs and looks to Al. “More like we’re gonna potentially die trying, yes.”

She looks alarmed and turns to Al, who looks back at Ed and nods. “There’s a lot of back story to this that we _have_ to explain, so please don’t interrupt us or start yelling that we’re a pair of lunatics or anything like that, please. It’s gonna sound like a fantasy, and perhaps, to some people, it may well be.”

Ed looks down at his hands and then at Gracia before firmly looking down at his shoes. Head-on confrontation he’s good at. Alchemical explanations? Yes. But this? Explaining that _hey we just so happen to be from this alternate world you’ve never ever heard about in your life would you be so kind as to not call the police at us and have them cart us off to an insane asylum, thank you_. No chance. “We were born in a little village called Resembool east in a country called Amestris. You probably haven’t heard of Amestris before, like just about every other person in this world. Oh yeah, it’s in another dimension.”

Gracia opens her mouth as if to speak but Ed holds up a hand so that he can continue. “You can imagine these two worlds as mirror images of one another, with duplicates of people. That’s how— my chemistry professor is the doppelgänger of my superior officer back in Amestris.”

“Amestris focuses more on the science of alchemy rather than the natural sciences,” Al continues from where Ed had stopped. “Both me and Al are alchemists, and that’s how we made our living— working for the military. Our government was really corrupt, and as a result of that, Ed did some alchemy that made him accidentally land in England in this world, where his doppelgänger died. Then he got sent back to Amestris, and sent back to Germany _again_ around an hour later, but this time to Munich, which is where he’s been ever since.”

“That’s around the time you got to know me, Gracia,” Ed says, and the expression Gracia is wearing makes him feel ten kinds of guilty and five kinds of uncomfortable. “When I moved in here with Alfons, back when my German was so bad you could ask me about the weather and I’d tell you how stupid university was.”

All this time, Noah’s only been sitting there, in the chair beside Gracia, still as a statue. But now she speaks up. “I know it may seem unbelievable, but I can verify every part of it. I know that what they speak are truths that harbour no lies. Just how you know that things in this country are about to take a turn for the worse.”

“This is,” Gracia starts and she’s looking pale, which Ed guesses is pretty understandable. “Okay, I mean, I understand. I believe you two boys, and I don’t think that this is a practical joke when neither of you have ever treated me that way.”

“It’ll take a bit of time to digest it all,” Gracia continues and she’s holding onto her skirt for dear life. “But I believe you. And you have to go home? How? There’s no magic train bringing you there.” She laughs briefly. “I suppose you can’t walk there either.”

Ed grins because he gets to talk about alchemy to someone else than Al for the first time in _ages_. For the first time since… since Hohenheim of Light… since, well, his _dad_ had been alive. “Well, you see, alchemy can do a whole load of shit. Some of it good, and most of it bad. In this world, alchemy powered by yourself isn’t possible, but when you draw the right circle, you can draw on the energy from the Gate to trigger the transmutation for you.”

There’s some scratch paper on the coffee table and Ed always carries a pen on him nowadays. He scribbles out a basic circle for changing state and shows it to Gracia. “This is an introduction circle used to teach young children who show potential for alchemy. It changes states of an object and is commonly used to heat or cool water.”

Gracia looks at it. “A circle is what causes the reaction to happen? That’s really fascinating. I would love to have you show me once, but I guess that’s not possible.”

Ed shakes his head and is actually sort of sad because if he _had_ been able to, he totally would have. Talking about alchemy is like stabbing a needle into his chest. Right to the void in there where alchemy tends to reside.

Being without is like missing a vital organ, and though he’s adapted, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss it. Just because he has metal, fully functioning limbs doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss his original ones.

“No,” he says. “I would love to. But alchemy’s only possible here if you drain it from the portal, and that’s dangerous. Leaves massive destruction in its wake. Last time, we tore up two entire cities with earthquakes, so connecting to the Gate here is a last resort only.”

There’s a nagging thought at the back of his mind to mention that it’s also _stupid_ to even try alchemy in this world. “It’s dangerous too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all are ready for this mess
> 
> Also all my thanks go to the Royed discord server for being the absolute fucking best and I love y'all


End file.
